"Exordium" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exordium, which has points of resemblance with that of the insufferable Bana's Harsha-charita, is only the Hindoo method of declaring that the two characters presently to be brought upon the scene are mortal incarnations ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... After an exordium of respectful compliment to the Parliament, the rhetorical skill of which is as masterly as the sincerity is obvious, Milton announces his purpose. He thinks so highly of the Parliament that he will pay them ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Archbishop, who was suffering from an affection of the lungs. The fame of Cardan as a physician had spread as far as Scotland, and the Archbishop had set his heart on consulting him. Cassanate's letter is of prodigious length. After a diffuse exordium he proceeds to praise in somewhat fulsome terms the De Libris Propriis and the treatises De Sapientia[137] and De Consolatione, which had been given to him by a friend when he was studying at Toulouse in 1549. He had just read the De Subtilitate, ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... little disarmed by this straightforward mode of procedure. He dropped unuttered the elaborate exordium he had been preparing on the tendency of young men to be led astray by speciously pleading schemers, and found himself replying mildly to questions about himself and various old friends of his, whom Drusus had known as a boy before he went to Athens. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... him, of course,) donate large sums of money to certain poor, but honest men, who adorn the lobby of the House, while they are waiting for generous patrons like unto you, then go home and calmly await the result. Your representative makes a speech, the exordium of which is Patriotism, the peroration of which is Star-Spangled Banner, and the central plum of which is your coal mine or iron mill. Your poor and honest friends wear out several pairs of shoes, the tariff bill is passed, your mine or mill is abundantly protected, and the country is saved. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... something charmingly cordial and engaging in the manner in which after saying "Now, Handel," as if it were the grave beginning of a portentous business exordium, he had suddenly given up that tone, stretched out his honest hand, and spoken like ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... With this exordium, Mr Ralph Nickleby took a newspaper from his pocket, and after unfolding it, and looking for a short time among the ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... use of which Siegfried now learns for the first time. It is of course part of the bargain that Gunther shall give his sister to Siegfried in marriage. On that they swear blood-brotherhood; and at this opportunity the old operatic leaven breaks out amusingly in Wagner. With tremendous exordium of brass, the tenor and baritone go at it with a will, showing off the power of their voices, following each other in canonic imitation, singing together in thirds and sixths, and finishing with a lurid unison, quite in the manner of Ruy Gomez and Ernani, or Othello and Iago. ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... likely that when he shall have attained the age that permits him to be present in the assemblies of the people, if any important affair come to be debated there, he will not fail to give his judgment of it; and in my opinion he would introduce his harangue by a very pleasant exordium, if he should begin with giving them to understand that he had never learnt anything of any man whatsoever; he must address himself to them in words ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... carry on his front the classic legend: "Please do not look on my back." But what is dearest to the souls of these editors is a mean commonplace. One leader, which surely had a triumphant success, is headed, "What the Bar-tender Sees." And the exordium is worthy so profound a speculation. "Did you ever stop to think," murmurs the Yellow philosopher, "of all the strange beings that pass before him?" There's profundity for you! There's invention! Is it wonderful that five million men ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... proclamation, music sounds; the poet advances and improvises an address, in which he announces the subject of the piece; his manner is partly serious, partly jesting. He points out the advocate who is to plead the cause of morals and propriety: this one rises, and, in the course of his exordium, takes care to throw out all the sarcasm he can against his rival, who rouses himself, and the battle of tongues begins, and is carried on in a sort of rhyming prose, in which nothing is spared to give force to jest or argument against the reigning vices or follies ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... elegant oration, came to Cleomenes, king of Sparta, to incite him to a war against the tyrant Polycrates; who, after he had heard their harangue with great gravity and patience, gave them this answer: "As to the exordium, I remember it not, nor consequently the middle of your speech; and for what concerns your conclusion, I will not do what you desire:"—[Plutarch, Apothegms of the Lacedaemonians.]—a very pretty answer this, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... that august body; the members looking round upon each other, individually reluctant to open a business so fearfully momentous. This "deep and deathlike silence" was beginning to become painfully embarrassing, when Patrick Henry arose. He faltered at first, as was his habit; but his exordium was impressive; and as he launched forth into a recital of colonial wrongs he kindled with his subject, until he poured forth one of those eloquent appeals which had so often shaken the House of Burgesses and gained him the fame of being the greatest orator of Virginia. He sat down, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... you that I was the count's confidential agent. In him I lose a protector. Respect alone prevents me from saying a friend. He had no secrets from me." M. Fortunat saw so plainly that Madame d'Argeles did not understand a word of this sentimental exordium that he thought it necessary to add: "I tell you this, not so much to gain your consideration and good-will, as to explain to you how I became acquainted with these matters relating to your family—how I became aware of your existence, ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... of Frederick the Great with his Nephew the Heir-Apparent, every line of which betrays itself as false and spurious to a reader who has made any direct or effectual study of Frederick or his manners or affairs,—it is set forth, in the way of exordium to these pretended royal confessions, that 'notre maison,' our Family of Hohenzollern, ever since the first origin of it among the Swabian mountains, or its first descent therefrom into the Castle and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... just enough to give force and depth to the whole—a sense of duty, a duty that must be done, whether pleasant or otherwise, and about which there was no choice. What a world of anxiety and doubt the consciousness of this saves us!" This exordium reads more like the utterance of a man being led out to execution than a Minister going to a country possessing an ancient civilisation—a civilisation which had had its effect on every phase of the national ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... them out of the Union." Horace Greeley was the editor of the war epoch. Greeley said, "Emancipation is first, the Union secondary. If they prefer slavery to liberty let the erring sisters go." Beecher was the all-round man of genius. His great speech in England began with an exordium at Manchester; he stated the arguments at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool; he pronounced the peroration at Exeter Hall, in London, and no such peroration and eloquence has been heard since Demosthenes' philippic against the ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... London, April 29, 1876. The President, Sir Francis Grant, in introducing Mr. Froude, said: "The next toast is 'The Interests of Literature and Science.' This toast is always so welcome and so highly appreciated that it needs no exordium from the chair. I cannot associate with the interests of literature a name more worthy than that of Mr. Froude, the scholar and ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... quibus beatae Virginis partus exstitit salutis exordium, conceptionis ejus votiva solemnitas pacis ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... with my fine company, when the sexton of the church came in to tell me that they were waiting for me in the vestry. With a full stomach and my head rather heated, I took my leave, ran to the church, and entered the pulpit. I went through the exordium with credit to myself, and I took breathing time; but scarcely had I pronounced the first sentences of the narration, before I forgot what I was saying, what I had to say, and in my endeavours to proceed, I fairly ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the witness of the discords which rend us to pieces. I envy his death." The deep serenity of a powerful mind was felt in his every tone—a mind resolute to contend against factions unto death. He then read a memorial relating to the ministry of war. His exordium was an attack upon the Jacobins, and a claim for the respect due to the ministers of the executive power. "Do you hear Cromwell!" exclaimed Guadet, in a voice of thunder. "He thinks himself already so sure of empire, that he dares to inflict ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the Love of God as shown in creation and redemption is then no mere general exordium, but in close dramatic unity with the sequel of the letter. The Augustinian theology, however alien to our modern modes of thought, has, as she puts it, a nobility not to be ignored. As presented briefly here, and more grandly by Dante in the seventh canto of ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... During this exordium I had noticed a venerable man in a fine blue surtout and a wide-brimmed hat, who sat upon the shaft of a cart and puffed slowly at a great pipe. And as he puffed, he listened intently to the quack-salver's address, and from time to ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... The exordium to the fourth book, which sometimes rises into eloquence, glorifies fate as the ultimate divine power, but denies it either will or personality. He fortifies his argument, according to his wont, by a historical catalogue, which exemplifies ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... after, he published, in the Ami des Lois, the answer he had offered to the district court, preceded by an exordium, in which he complained, that the court had refused to hear it. He added, that the judge 'had indulged himself, on his route to Bayou Sarah, in manifesting apprehensions as to the fate of the country, equally disgraceful ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... disbelief of a Supreme Deity, and state that he could not credit the existence of a Being, whose power was said to extend every where, but whom he had not yet seen, although he was now an old man. The aged sceptic is not a little conceited, as the following exordium to one of his speeches evinces: "It is very strange that I never meet with any one who is equal in sense to myself." The same old man, in one of his communicative moods, related to us the following tradition. The earth had been formed, but continued enveloped ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... night, shown off like the hyena of Exeter 'Change, looking almost as wild and feeling quite as savage. Presenting me to each and all of the splendid crowd which an idle curiosity, easily excited and as soon satisfied, had gathered round us, she prefaced every introduction with a little exordium which seemed to amuse every one but its object: 'Lord Erskine, this is the Wild Irish Girl whom you are so anxious to know. I assure you she talks quite as well as she writes.—Now, my dear, do tell my Lord Erskine some of those Irish stories you told us the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... exordium on the duties of a citizen in an emergency, I remembered the "Standard Oil" code—"Everything for God (our God); God (our God) in everything." It was so essentially "Standard Oil," this willingness to commit even that greatest wrong, subverting the will of the people in the exercise of their highest ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... commonwealth, a rough unpolished people might well be satisfied with the tedious length of unskilful speeches, at a time when to make an harangue that took up the whole day, was the orator's highest praise. The prolix exordium, wasting itself in feeble preparation; the circumstantial narration, the ostentatious division of the argument under different heads, and the thousand proofs and logical distinctions, with whatever else is contained in the dry precepts of Hermagoras [b] and Apollodorus, were in that rude period ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... weary in the survey. This other makes me yawn. Better choose the bold, the frank, the generous, with all his faults; he may be rash, unthinking, wasting the powers whose force he knows not; but the capabilities of amendment are within him. What say you to my exordium?" ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... Admiral owned to me later that this exordium so bewildered him that he knew not "at which end to take hold of it," to use his own expression. I feel ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... the results of his long and anxious thoughts: I have purposely twisted his exordium into an ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... quoted by him, p. 457) approve of the idea that the beginning was suppressed because of its containing damaging reflections on the elders. Then the present opening (vv. 1—5) was borrowed from Θ, and is marked in both Cod. Chis. and Syro-Hex. as not part of the original work, but a foreign exordium. Rothstein (p. 184, note) thinks that in place of the present borrowed commencement there stood a short introductory remark on the two judging elders. Though lacking proof, this conjecture is well within the ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... let us not forget that the prelude, the refrain, is the spiritual expression of the song; that we must take advantage of this exordium to guide ourselves, to predispose our hearers in our favor; that we must point out to them, must make them foresee by the expression of our face the thought and the words which are to follow; that, in fact, the ravished spectator may be dazzled by a song which he has not ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... uncertain; she leant on a chair with drooping head and averted face, trembling, and suppressing a sob, apparently too much frightened to attend. Just when the exordium was over, and 'Therefore I lay my commands on you' might have been expected, it turned into, 'However, upon Mr. Dusautoy's kind representation, I have resolved to give the young man a trial, and provided he convinces ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the chamber we found Hutcheson still opposite the Iron Virgin; he had been evidently philosophising, and now gave us the benefit of his thought in the shape of a sort of exordium. ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... tete-a-tete one should talk about persons, and in general Society about things. The state of the weather is always an excusable exordium, but it is convenient to have a paradox or heresy on the subject always ready so as to direct the conversation into other channels. Really domestic people are almost invariably bad talkers as their very virtues in home life ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... facts on which my conclusions were founded, or showing, by one or two cases, at least, that I had made a mistake or offended against the strict rules of logic, there appears the following sweeping exordium, which has done service before in many an opening address of ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... suspected by friends in England of having some personal motive. In his fifteenth letter home, therefore, Smollett is assiduous in disclaiming anything of the kind. He begins by attempting an amende honorable, but before he has got well away from his exordium he insensibly and most characteristically diverges into the more congenial path of censure, and expands indeed into one of his most eloquent passages—a disquisition upon the French punctilio (conceived upon lines ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... of Tullie, after the exordium or beginnyng of Oracion, as the seconde parte: whiche parte of Rhetorike, is as it were the light of all the Oracion folowing: conteining the cause, mat- ter, persone, tyme, with all breuitie, bothe of wordes, and ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... Aurelia had no word of reply to this exordium. Seeing her keep the same haughty posture in her chair, with eyes scornfully averted as if she scarce listened, Leander proceeded to disclose his mind in less ornate terms By subtle grades of confidential speech, beginning with a declaration of ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... our representation of the life and history of the great Macedonian, of the 'Marriage of Alexander and Roxana,' and I hereby request those among you to come upon the stage whom our artists have selected to take part in this scene in the procession." After this exordium he shouted in a deep and resonant voice a long list of names, and while this was going on every other sound was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the consummation of his evolution toward the acme of powerful expression. It is cast in a mould essentially heroic; it has its moods of tenderness, of insistent sweetness, but these are incidental: the governing mood is signified in the tremendous exordium with which the work opens, and which is sustained, with few deviations, throughout the work. Deirdre he has realised exquisitely in his middle movement: that is her image, in all its fragrant loveliness. MacDowell has limned her musically ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... repeat yourself. It is the custom of lovers to abuse of the gorgiaques figures from the very protasis and exordium. ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... in singularity; and dread a refinement of wisdom as a deviation into folly." Thus she dogmatically addresses a new married man; and to elucidate this pompous exordium, she adds, "I said that the person of your lady would not grow more pleasing to you, but pray let her never suspect that it grows less so: that a woman will pardon an affront to her understanding much sooner than one to ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... spies" is of course the meaning, though it would spoil the effect of this curiously elaborate exordium if spies were actually mentioned ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... her, and he protests that he would never aspire to any higher privilege. It is gratifying to add that he follows her through many startling vicissitudes of fortune in a spirit worthy of this exordium, and of course is finally persuaded that he may allow himself a nearer approach to his goddess. The Maid of Honour has two lovers, who accept a rather similar position. One of them is unlucky enough ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... object is evidently to deprive Talleyrand, to whom on all occasions he manifests a singular bitterness, of the credit generally given him of having aided materially in the recall of the Bourbons in 1814. But does he effect this by showing, as from this exordium we might expect, that his countrymen of the middle class, wearied of the costly triumphs and disasters of the empire, had begun to sigh for peace and their old kings? Not at all. He transfers the personal share ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... better pecuniary terms, does not appear. But he represents himself as gravely insulted; 'seeing that my tenor of life from boyhood upwards has been always honorable, and thus it ever shall be.' After this exordium in the form of a letter addressed to one Signor Antonio [Serguidi], he proceeds to render account of his proceedings. It seems that Don Piero de'Medici gave him three hundred crowns for his traveling ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... regular exordium every Saturday night; for we children, being blinded, as she supposed, by natural depravity, always made strange mistakes in reckoning time on Saturday afternoons. After being duly suppered and scrubbed, we were enjoined to go to bed, and remember that to-morrow was Sunday, and that ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... us shudder with a creeping, nameless terror as the scene after the murder of Duncan, when Macbeth rushes out from the chamber of death, crying, "I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?" I have studied this famous exordium with extreme care, and I have sought diligently in the works of all the great modern orators, and of some of the ancient as well, for similar passages of higher merit. My quest has been in vain. Mr. Webster's description of the White ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... like this exordium; he replied, stepping into the road at the same time, "I've no money, and ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... mentioned rather mysteriously in my last compels me again to proceed. But before I disclose it, I must require the most inviolable Secrecy, for if ever I find that it has transpired, all confidence, all Friendship between us has concluded. I do not mean this exordium as a threat to induce you to comply with my request but merely (whether you accede or not) to keep it a Secret. And although your compliance would essentially oblige me, yet, believe me, my esteem will not be diminished by your Refusal; nor shall I suffer a complaint to escape. The Affair ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... either of having been an accomplice in a scheme now denounced by himself as a pirate's conspiracy, or of having betrayed, out of cowardice and cupidity, a faithful servant to foreign vengeance. That is the meaning of the exordium of this pamphlet published in November by the King's Printers, Bonham Norton and John Bill: 'Although Kings be not bound to give account of their actions to any but God alone; yet such are his Majesty's proceedings, as he hath always been willing to bring them before sun and moon, and ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... farmhouses which he let out to tenants. The post-mortem inventory of his goods, which was made on December 9, 1556, shows that he had lived in comfort; his house was adorned by as many as eleven 'painted cloths,' which then did duty for tapestries among the middle class. The exordium of his will, which was drawn up on November 24, 1556, and proved on December 16 following, indicates that he was an observant Catholic. For his two youngest daughters, Alice and Mary, he showed especial affection by nominating them his executors. Mary received not only 6 pounds 13s. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... fact that nine days it was when she was apprised of the incarnation of the divine Messiah, and also because of the nine months in which she carried Him in her virgin womb. (Novena to Jesus, Maria, and Jose, Manila, 1903, in the Exordium.) ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... Fenwick? You're a nice, respectable young monkey! Well, he's not half a bad-looking fellow; well set up." But none of this, though good in itself, is what Sally sat down to talk about. A sudden change in her manner, a new earnestness, makes the Major stop an incipient yawn he is utilising as an exordium to a hint that we ought to go to bed, and become quite wakeful to say: "I will tell you all I can, my child." For Sally has thrust aside talk of the day's events, making no more of the wedding ceremony than of "Charley's Aunt," with: "Why did my father and mother part? You will tell me now, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... he continued, clearing his throat which had grown somewhat rusty from his pompous exordium "the late respected gentleman in question did not leave matters in as satisfactory a condition as might have been desired—in fact—eh—well, altogether, the residue of his once considerable fortune makes but a paltry annuity for his bereaved survivors. Were Mrs. Hampden the only ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... is the exordium, written by Richard Eden, from whose work it was adopted by Hakluyt, yet without acknowledgement. In the title, it appears that this expedition was fitted out as the joint adventure of Sir George Barne, Sir John York, Thomas Lok, Anthony ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... solemnity and ridiculous parade as distinguished the early processions of the Pagans, Heathens, and Druids. The honours bestowed upon the dead may inculcate a good moral lesson upon the minds of the living, and teach them so to act in this life that their cold remains may deserve the after-exordium of their friends; but, in most instances, funeral pomp has more of worldly vanity in it than true respect, and it is no unusual circumstance in the meaner ranks of life, for the survivors to abridge their ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... ignoramus, an unlearned man, ignorant of all good rules; an ass, in plain English. What! you begin a discourse without a word of exordium! Some one else must tell me what happened; will you, young lady, tell me the particulars of all ...
— The Jealousy of le Barbouille - (La Jalousie du Barbouille) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... of making what I send you useful, which is, by sending you a blank sheet: sure you would not grudge threepence for a halfpenny sheet, when you give as much for one not worth a farthing. You drew this last paragraph on you by your exordium, as you call it, and conclusion. I hope, for the future, our correspondence will run a little more glibly, with dear George, and dear Harry [Conway]; not as formally as if we were playing a game at chess in Spain and Portugal; and Don Horatio was to have the honour of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... readily be surmised from this exordium that—incredible as it may seem in a man of thirty—this was my first visit to Paris. You may remember that I had bought Orlando's tickets, and it had occurred to Sylvia and me to use them. Sylvia was due in London to fulfil ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... pater et filius ac spiritus sanctus de diuinitate substantialiter praedicentur an alio quolibet modo; uiamque indaginis hinc arbitror esse sumendam, unde rerum omnium manifestum constat exordium, id est ab ipsis catholicae fidei fundamentis. Si igitur interrogem, an qui dicitur pater substantia sit, respondetur esse substantia. Quod si quaeram, an filius substantia sit, idem dicitur. Spiritum ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... sat in an amazed speculation as to whither the orator was being led by this extraordinary exordium, but ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... rarely attempts to ethicize the Bible story. For the most part he paraphrases it, cuts out its poetry, and reduces it to a prosaic chronicle of facts. The exordium in fact has little relation to the book, and looks as if it were borrowed without discrimination. Josephus next, indeed, professes that he will accurately set out in chronological order the incidents in the Jewish annals, ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... exordium of a letter preceding its business-matter and in which the writer displays all his art. It ends with "Amm ba'd," lit.but after, equivalent to our "To proceed." This "Khitb" is mostly skipped over ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... While this exordium is in hand—and it takes some time—Mr. Bucket, who has seen through the transparency of Mrs. Snagsby's vinegar at a glance, confers with his familiar demon and bestows his shrewd attention on the Chadbands and Mr. Smallweed. Sir Leicester Dedlock remains immovable, with the same ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... complaints with great round eyes, which evinced no exact intelligence of the orator's meaning; and when the knight paused to take breath, he looked with a doubtful and inquiring eye at the Sub-Prior, not well knowing in what tone he should reply to an exordium so extraordinary. The Sub-Prior accordingly stepped in to the relief ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... Mr. Lestiboudois that we will argue, for how is it possible to do so with Mr. Gauthier? If you say to the latter, the balance of trade is a mistake, he will answer, So I have declared it in my exordium. If you exclaim, But it is a truth, he will say, Thus I have ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... you may count upon me," he answered, wondering where this strange exordium would ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... public exordium, a contemptible fellow sought a quarrel with me, and obliged me to draw in my own defence, whom, on this occasion, I wounded in ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... occasion. Each chief made a speech to the President, which was interpreted as they spoke. When it came to the turn of Eshkibogikoj (Flat Mouth) that venerable chief began with great dignity, saying: "Father! Two great men have met!" Here he paused to let the sentence be interpreted. His exordium amused not only the ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... in his later works owed to the "Roman of the Rose" was considerable, and by no means confined to the favourite May-morning exordium and the recurring machinery of a vision—to the origin of which latter (the dream of Scipio related by Cicero and expounded in the widely-read Commentary of Macrobius) the opening lines of the "Romaunt" point. He owes to the French poem both the ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... and Great Britain. Livingston suggests that if Great Britain invade Louisiana, who can oppose her? Once more he refers to Great Britain's superior fleet. This interesting address concludes with the following exordium to France: "She will cheaply purchase the esteem of men and the favor of Heaven by the surrender of a distant wilderness, which can neither add to her wealth nor to her strength." This, as you will perceive, ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... That the fervent wish in your behalf with which I set out, was no more than the first insinuating How d'ye of a caressing prefacer, stifling his reader, as a lover sometimes does a coy mistress, into silence. For alas! could this effusion of light have been as easily procured, as the exordium wished it—I tremble to think how many thousands for it, of benighted travellers (in the learned sciences at least) must have groped and blundered on in the dark, all the nights of their lives—running their heads against posts, and knocking out their brains without ever getting to ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... sole purpose is to apply "moral suasion" to the slaveholders themselves. As a matter of curiosity, I should like to know what their idea of this "moral suasion" is. Their discourses—yours is no exception—are all tirades, the exordium, argument and peroration, turning on the epithets "tyrants," "thieves," "murderers," addressed to us. They revile us as "atrocious monsters," "violators of the laws of nature, God and man," our homes the abode of every iniquity, our land a "brothel." We retort, that ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... read his words in the pages of Thucydides—who was himself an exile from Athens at this period, and may probably have been at Sparta, and heard Alcibiades speak—we are at a loss whether most to admire or abhor his subtle counsels. After an artful exordium, in which he tried to disarm the suspicions which he felt must be entertained of him, and to point out to the Spartans how completely his interests and theirs were identified, through hatred of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... pronounced with a grave face, in a loud, rapid, and sonorous tone of voice, startled the good people of the house, who sat mute and astonished at such an exordium from the worthy pastor: but no sooner had he uttered Brian Buie's name, giving him, at the same time, a fierce and authoritative look, than the latter started to his feet, and stepped down in a kind of alarm towards the door. The priest immediately placed ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... feelings, and I trust that when the time arrives for the settlement of any pecuniary consideration which I am to derive from these irksome and uncongenial labours, my wounded self-respect may not be omitted from the reckoning. The above exordium may appear to you tedious, but it is only just to myself to remind you that you are not dealing with a vulgar hireling. My first step, after duly meditating your suggestions, was to find a fitting watch for the movements of Hawkehurst. I opined that the best person ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... say many things either to their relatives or friends or enemies or the people, yet to each he assigns a fitting type of speech, as in the beginning he makes Chryseis in his words to the Greeks use a most appropriate exordium. First he desires for them that they may be superior to their enemies and may return home, in order that he might gain their kindly feeling. Then he demands his daughter. But Achilles being angered by the threat of Agamemnon combines a speech for the Greeks and ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... come to the conversations very well dressed, and, altogether, looked sumptuously. She began them with an exordium, in which she gave her leading views; and those exordiums were excellent, from the elevation of the tone, the ease and flow of discourse, and from the tact with which they were kept aloof from any excess, and from the gracefulness ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... led off in his favor was California; and it was a representative of California who first sounded the charge for Douglas's cohorts in the House. In any other place and at any other time, Marshall's exordium would have overshot the mark. Indeed, in indorsing the attack of the Review on the old fogies in the party, he tore open wounds which it were best to let heal; but gauged by the prevailing standard ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... the corridors, or lounge in the House, it would be better. But to sit cooped up here is terrible. Worst of it is I've conned my speech over so often, got it mixed up; end turning up in middle; exordium marching in with rear-guard; was just right to go off at half-past six; now it's eight, and we won't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... of the presiding magistrate sat no other person than his own father. Mr. Lyons opened the cause very briefly.... And now came on the first trial of Patrick Henry's strength. No one had ever heard him speak,[53] and curiosity was on tiptoe. He rose very awkwardly, and faltered much in his exordium. The people hung their heads at so unpromising a commencement; the clergy were observed to exchange sly looks with each other; and his father is described as having almost sunk with confusion, from his seat. But these feelings were of ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... confess that this strange exordium dashed hopes which had already risen to a high pitch. Recovering myself as quickly as possible, however, I murmured that the honour of a visit from the King of Navarre was sufficient happiness ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... thoroughly known, and, therefore, thoroughly well appreciated. The opening address of Serjeant Buzfuz every one naturally enough regarded as one of the most mirth-moving portions of the whole representation. In the very exordium of it there was something eminently absurd in the Serjeant's extraordinarily precise, almost mincing pronunciation. As where he said, that "never in the whole course of his professional experience—never from the first moment of his applying himself to the study and practice of the law—had he approached ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... The pompous exordium of Statius is well known, and the fragments of Ennius present us a most tremendous commencement ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... stood perfectly still, while Podatadsky, by way of exordium, embraced her affectionately. Neither did she offer any opposition to his daring hands, as first they removed her long mantilla, and then threw back her black crape veil which had so faithfully ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... which he might have been expected to have retained, and adding others with good judgment and in general with good effect, but which by some fatality usually tend in his hands to excessive prolixity. This is certainly not the case with his dignified and spirited exordium, but in the fourth stanza he begins to copy history, and his muse's wing immediately flags. No more striking example of the superiority of dramatic to narrative poetry in vividness of delineation could be found than the contrast between Shakespeare's scene representing the Archbishop ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... he has endeavoured to enliven the monotony of his subject, are sometimes very far-fetched. He has scarcely finished his exordium, when he goes back to the third day of the creation, and then passes on to the deluge. This reminds one of the Mock Advocate in the Plaideurs of Racine, who, having to defend the cause of a dog that ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... examination have been diligently found out by the rules of art, and handled with due care and deliberation, then at length we may proceed to arrange the remaining portions of our speech. And these portions appear to us to be in all six; the exordium, the relation of the fact, the division of the different circumstances and topics, the bringing forward of evidence, the finding fault with the action which has ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... time after this amiable exordium to make the stranger understand the right a Capuchin had ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Annotatur hic qualiter puer quidam bis biennis in molendino aquatico submersus fuerat (et) ad inuocacionem beati regis henrici resuscitatus a mortuis anno dominice incarnacionis 1481. qui erat annus regni Edwardi quarti regis famosissimi vicesimus primus. Et primo ponitur exordium breue et deinde ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... audience in these words: [50]"Messieurs, dans l'univers il n'ya qu'un soleil; dans le royaume de France il n'ya qu'un Roi; dans la medicine il n'ya que Charini." With this he placed his hand on his heart, bowed, and drew himself up with a look of the most glorious complacency. This exordium was received with the most rapturous applause by the crowd, who, from having often seen him in his progress through the kingdom, had known before that this was Charini himself, the celebrated itinerant worm doctor. "Gentlemen," ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... took out a writing-block, and traced upon it the words, "My dear Jack, I think I ought to tell you—" or a similar exordium. She got no further. How could she tell him that without telling him more? And how tell him more when, of her own accord, she had sent him about his business, and set her approval upon his marriage, or what must be considered his marriage? An instinct ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... your correspondents give their articles under their signature, so that one could be openly corrected by another who had read the same work. Again, it is only the leading idea of the book which you would require, and no attendant praise or blame, neither eulogistic exordium nor useless appeals to the reader. The author, moreover, might send you the skeleton of his own book, and {490} you would of course give this the prior place ...
— Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 - A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, - Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. • Various
... also the end, of all knowledge, against every merely formal dictate (their name is legion with practising Sophists of all ages) Peri brachylogias, kai eleeinologias, kai deinoseos, concerning freedom or precision, figure, emphasis, proportion of parts and the like, exordium and conclusion:—against all such the Platonic Socrates still protests, "You know what must be known before harmony can be attained, but not yet the laws of harmony itself,"—ta pro tragodias, Sophocles would object in like case, ta pro tragodias, all' ou tragika. Given the dynamic ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... at that lady's continued severity, was desirous of speaking; for he liked Aunt Becky, and his heart swelled within him at her injustice; but though he hemmed once or twice, somehow the exordium was not ready, and his feelings could not ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... After this lengthy exordium, Orris discreetly, changed the subject by wanting to know when he and Buck would be assigned ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... or two, in front of his curule chair, and in a clear slow voice gave utterance to the solemn words, which formed the exordium ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... rebuked as a ne'er-do-well and sinner as much as any one, or perhaps more. But you must know that I have not been guilty in the affair for which you take me to task now, neither as regards them nor any one else, except it be in doing more than was my duty." After this exordium he proceeds to give an elaborate explanation of his dealings with Lapo, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... impressive by the majestic singleness of its theme; Faith, from first to last, is its matter and its burthen. Further, it carries one long appeal to the heart by its method; almost from the exordium to the very close it deals with its theme not by abstract reasoning, nor even by a citation of inspired utterances only. It works out its message by a display, in long and living procession, of inspired human experiences. It is to an extraordinary degree ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... the conclusion, however. Prince Ernest, now being truly alarmed, despatched a messenger to the church for her Highness; but as Doctor Gerschovius had not yet ended his exordium, her Grace would by no means be disturbed, and desired the messenger to go to Ulrich, who no sooner heard the tidings than he rushed down to the water-gate. There he found a great crowd assembled, all eagerly trying, with poles ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... science,—"Jonathan Weatherwise's Prognostications. As it is not likely that I have a long Time to act on the Stage of this Life, for what with Head-Aches, hard Labour, Storms and broken Spectacles I feel my Blood chilling, and Time, that greedy Tyrant, devouring my whole Constitution," etc.,—an exordium which is certainly well adapted to excite our sympathy for Jonathan, even if it fail to inspire confidence in his "Prognostications," and leave us a little in the dark as to the necessary connection between "broken spectacles" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... half-ironic devotion. Many of Nostromo's speeches I have heard first in Dominic's voice. His hand on the tiller and his fearless eyes roaming the horizon from within the monkish hood shadowing his face, he would utter the usual exordium of his remorseless wisdom: "Vous autres gentilhommes!" in a caustic tone that hangs on my ear yet. Like Nostromo! "You hombres finos!" Very much like Nostromo. But Dominic the Corsican nursed a certain ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... At this astounding exordium Paul eagerly pressed forward and entered the bureau. There certainly was Colonel Pendleton, in spotless evening dress; erect, flashing, and indignant; his aquiline nose lifted like a hawk's beak over his quarry, his iron-gray moustache, now white and waxed, ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... pointed to a chair and politely turned away to hide a yawn. For the young man's lengthy exordium had made him very drowsy. He could very comfortably had fallen asleep at this moment. But Gibson Jerkley began to speak, and in a short space of time Sir Charles was as wide-awake as ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... Halstead's Succinct Genealogy of the Family of Vere, 1685; Collins's Historical Collections. See in the Lords' Journals, and in Jones's Reports, the proceedings respecting the earldom of Oxford, in March and April 1625/6. The exordium of the speech of Lord Chief Justice Crew is among the finest specimens of the ancient English eloquence. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... personalities but more unsparing in rhetoric and stronger in historical arraignment, he delineated what he named the "Barbarism of Slavery." Picturing to ourselves the orator, the circumstances, and the theme, we can comprehend the exaltation with which he exclaimed in his exordium: "Slavery must be resisted not only on political grounds, but on all other grounds, whether social, economical, or moral. Ours is no holiday contest; nor is it any strife of rival factions—of White and Red Roses; of theatric Neri and Bianchi; but it is a solemn battle ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... to become very much animated,—to lash myself into a state of high excitement, and to hold forth as though I were making an exordium,—to talk with furious rapidity, using the most forcible expressions, the most emphatic ejaculations! Those unloose my tongue! My words hurl themselves impetuously forward, as zouaves in battle! Only, as you may conceive, this discourse is not of a very ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Now such a distinction probably, if conceived as a conscious principle, is alien to ancient thought, at any rate at the time of Protagoras; and yet it may contain a grain of truth. When it is borne in mind that the incriminated passage represents the very exordium of the work of Protagoras, the impression cannot be avoided that he himself did not intend his work to disturb the established religion, but that he quite naively took up the existence of the gods as a subject, as good as any other, for dialectic discussion. All that he was concerned with was theory ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... Flight, attracted at the time a good deal of newspaper notice; my friend Colonel Fred. Burnaby being in the chair, supported by several other aeronautical notables. From a rough copy by me I have thought fit to preserve the exordium ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of this paper, or it would be pleasant to dwell upon Mr. Thomson's modesty, his untiring industry, and his devotion to his art. But in regard to that art, it may be observed that to characterise it solely as "packing the memory with pleasant fancies" may suffice for an exordium, but is inadequate as a final appreciation. Let me therefore note down, as they occur to me, some of his more prominent pictorial characteristics. With three of the artists mentioned in this and the preceding paper, he has obvious affinities, while, in ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... October 29, 1713, which was probably written by Addison, speaks handsomely of this poem. The Last Day was published soon after the peace. The vicechancellor's imprimatur, for it was printed at Oxford, is dated May the 19th, 1713. From the exordium, Young appears to have spent some time on the composition of it. While other bards "with Britain's hero set their souls on fire," he draws, he says, a deeper scene. Marlborough had been considered by Britain as her hero; but, when the Last Day was published, female ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... considering that gentlemen opposite are upon this occasion the partisans of a gigantic innovation,—the most gigantic and the most dangerous that has been attempted in modern times,—I may compliment them upon the prudence they show in resolving to be its silent partisans." After this emphatic exordium, which electrified the House, and was followed by such a tempest of applause as for some time to drown the voice of the speaker, he proceeded at once to demonstrate the utter folly and error of contending that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... consecutive metaphor, "his feet are taking fast hold of destruction." Here the child drew a breath of relief, possibly at the prospect of being on firm ground of any kind at last; but Sister Medliker, to whom the Staples style of exordium had only a Sabbath significance, turned to her ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte |
