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Declamation   Listen
noun
Declamation  n.  
1.
The act or art of declaiming; rhetorical delivery; haranguing; loud speaking in public; especially, the public recitation of speeches as an exercise in schools and colleges; as, the practice declamation by students. "The public listened with little emotion, but with much civility, to five acts of monotonous declamation."
2.
A set or harangue; declamatory discourse.
3.
Pretentious rhetorical display, with more sound than sense; as, mere declamation.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Declamation" Quotes from Famous Books



... year (1831) he obtained the first college prize for an English declamation. The subject chosen by him was the conduct of the Independent party during the civil war. This exercise was greatly admired at the time, but was never printed. In consequence of this success, it became incumbent on him, according to the custom ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... are doubtless good witnesses, though they sedulously refrained from any testimony on the subject, contenting themselves with declamation. But they are not the only good witnesses. After the loss of a leg at Gettysburg, I was ordered to duty in the War Department, where I served in charge of one or other bureau for seven years. I have heard this Hooker question discussed in all its ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... surrender both, in exchange for the heart and hand which she apparently expected to receive? But was it a vision that I had witnessed in the wood? Was Westervelt a goblin? Were those words of passion and agony, which Zenobia had uttered in my hearing, a mere stage declamation? Were they formed of a material lighter than common air? Or, supposing them to bear sterling weight, was it a perilous and dreadful wrong which she was meditating towards herself ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... developed, these attacks passed from the region of private conversation to the columns of newspapers and the declamation of mob orators, and an especial snarl was raised over the circumstance that at some public ball the President and Mrs. Washington were escorted to a sofa on a raised platform, and that guests passed before them and bowed. ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge

... absolutely shocked; he held up his hands, began a declamation on the rules of evidence, and uttered so many Pharisaical platitudes that I only escaped annihilation by a hair's-breadth. He ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... coming from Sallust, who would have censured if he could, it is as eloquent as any eulogy. There is extant a passage attributed to Sallust full of virulent abuse of Cicero, but no one now imagines that Sallust wrote it. It is called the Declamation of Sallust against Cicero, and bears intrinsic evidence that it was written in after years. It suited some one to forge pretended invectives between Sallust and Cicero, and is chiefly noteworthy here because it gives to ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... from declamation to reproach, Lester laughed outright; and his nephew, in high anger, rose and left ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire to it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers

... what followed. The afflatus of the true orator had at last fallen upon him; the mighty ship was launched, and swept out to sea under full canvas. Old Kentucky was on her feet that night in San Jose. It was indescribable. Flashes of spiritual illumination, explosive bursts of eloquent declamation, sparkles of chastened wit, appeals of overwhelming intensity, followed like the thunder and lightning of a Southern storm. The church seemed literally to rock. "Amens" burst from the electrified Methodists of all sorts; these were followed by "hallelujahs" on all sides; and when the ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald

... lead at the London Debating Club in one of the most remarkable collections of 'spirits of the age' that ever congregated for intellectual gladiatorship, he being by two or three years the junior of the clique. The rivalry was rather in knowledge and reasoning than in eloquence, mere declamation was discouraged; and subjects of paramount importance were conscientiously thought out." In evidence of his more general studies, we may here repeat a few sentences from an account, by an intimate friend of both ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other

... not extraordinary, and of word painting he has not left a single striking example,—not one passage that can be used for recitation or declamation in the schools. His cause was too pressing, his manner of life was too serious, for any indulgences in speech. In every speech he had an object in view; and even when he was without hope for Hungary in ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell

... boldness and rapidity sufficient to alarm me, lest he should fail in memory as to the conclusion. There was no failure:—he came round to the close of his composition without discovering any impediment and irregularity on the whole. I questioned him, why he had altered his declamation? He declared he had made no alteration, and did not know, in speaking, that he had deviated from it one letter. I believed him; and from a knowledge of his temperament am convinced, that, fully impressed ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... made a funeral speech over the body of Caesar (Life of Antonius, c. 14; of Brutus, c. 20). Dion Cassius (44. c. 36-49) has put a long speech in the mouth of Antonius, mere empty declamation. Appianus (Civil Wars, ii. 144-6) gives one which is well enough suited to the character of Antonius. (Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta, ed. Mayer, p. 455.) It is probable that the speech of Antonius was preserved, and was used ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... Annual Register, and in most of our popular histories. Keightley says, "The overtures of France for peace were readily listened to; and both parties being in earnest, the preliminaries were readily settled at Fontainebleau (Nov. 3rd). In spite of the declamation of Mr. Pitt and his party, they were approved of by large majorities in both Houses of Parliament, and a treaty was finally signed in Paris, Feb. 18, 1763." The napkins were probably a gift, on the occasion, to some public functionary. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various

... two men were very different personally. As Campbell had borrowed from Akenside and written The Pleasures of Hope, Rogers enriched our literature with The Pleasures of Memory, a poem of exquisite versification, more finished and unified than its pendent picture; containing neither passion nor declamation, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... chaste models, and of which his lighter compositions, his Greek and Latin verses, bore testimony to the last. His eloquence was of a plain, masculine, authoritative cast, which neglected if it did not despise ornament, and partook in the least possible degree of fancy, while its declamation was often equally powerful with its reasoning and its statement. He was in this greatest quality of a statesman pre-eminently distinguished, that, as he neither would yield up his judgment to the clamour of the people, ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... emotion. Many of the members had sate in that very chamber with Russell. He had long exercised there an influence resembling the influence which, within the memory of this generation, belonged to the upright and benevolent Althorpe; an influence derived, not from superior skill in debate or in declamation, but from spotless integrity, from plain good sense, and from that frankness, that simplicity, that good nature, which are singularly graceful and winning in a man raised by birth and fortune high above his fellows. By the Whigs Russell had been honoured as a chief; and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... said the elderly individual, breathing forth an immense volume of smoke, which he had been collecting during the declamation of his young companion. "There are singular things in that book, I must confess; and I thank you for showing it to me, or rather your attempt at translation. I was struck with that ballad of Orm Ungarswayne, who goes by night to the grave-hill ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... dangerous word in English. Roars of laughter from the gods greeted the great actor's declamation, "The bed has not been slept in! Her little chamber ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... which threaten the Establishment?—Reduce this declamation to a point, and let us understand what you mean. The most ample allowance does not calculate that there would be more than twenty members who were Roman Catholics in one house, and ten in the other, if the Catholic emancipation were carried into effect. Do you mean that ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... play, the action itself was an appeal not less to the ear and to the eye than to the passion and the intellect. The circumstances of the representation, the huge auditorium in the open air, lent themselves less to "acting" in our sense of the term, than to attitude and declamation. The actors raised on high boots above their natural height, their faces hidden in masks and their tones mechanically magnified, must have relied for their effects not upon facial play, or rapid and subtle ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... caustic observations and wilful misconstructions, it is difficult to conceive wherein she (the Eagle) found pleasure in her society. Probably it was because she found in her one who would submit meekly to any amount of contradiction, and listen patiently to any amount of vituperative declamation. ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... by the folly of popular declamation is tempted to dismiss all objections to Coercion Acts, together with all arguments founded upon such objections, with one peremptory remark—namely, that since a law is merely a rule which men are compelled to obey by the power of the State, and Coercion ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey

... fine-fibred men are at a discount, where epithets find their subjects poison-proof, and the sting which would be fatal to a literary debutant only wakes the eloquence of the pachydermatous ward-room politician to a fiercer shriek of declamation. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... great antiquity. Cicero, in his Paradoxes, says that "if an actor lose the measure of a passage in the slightest degree, or make the line he utters a syllable too short or too long by his declamation, he is instantly hissed off the stage." Nor was hissing confined to the theatre, for in one of his letters Cicero refers to Hortensius as an orator who attained old age without once incurring the disgrace of being hissed. Pliny notes that some ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... equally menaced and imperilled; and they are, in virtue of that very fact, in abeyance, in order that they may be saved. It is said that the Constitution is not suspended because of rebellion, and this is the basis of much declamation, both in the Chicago platform and elsewhere, against the exercise of extraordinary powers on the part of the President. But the Constitution authorizes the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, that great writ of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... differences of capacity and of duty are numberless and immense. The statement is enough: argument would be ridiculous. The words of an audacious French preacher are yet more shocking than those of the English nobleman. It is hard to believe they could be uttered in good faith. Says Massillon, in his famous declamation on immortality, "If we wholly perish with the body, the maxims of charity, patience, justice, honor, gratitude, and friendship, are but empty words. Our own passions shall ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... Phedre, frequently to follow it. Perseus, pupil of Horace so far as his satires are concerned, was concise to the point of obscurity, but often displayed such vigour and ruggedness as to be powerfully moving. Lucian, spoilt by a certain taste for declamation, is really a sound poet, more especially as a poetic orator, and in this respect he is often admirable. Silius Italicus, Valerius Flaccus, Statius, revert to the school of Virgil and display talent ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet

... time, tells me of the charm of James's talk with his elders, and says that, although he was careless on some matters upon which schoolmasters set a high value, he always showed power and originality. He won an English Essay prize in 1875, the History prize in 1876 and 1877, the Declamation prize in 1878, and was one of the 'select' for ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... lucrative post he now occupies with my husband. He loves literature; but not that of his time and of his country, perhaps because he himself has failed in this. He prefers foreign writers and poets, whom he quotes with some taste, though with too much declamation. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... proceeded to his peroration, he grew warmed with the broad and boundless subject before him, and his declamation became alike bold and beautiful. All eyes were fixed upon him, and not a whisper from the still-murmuring woods which girded them in was perceptible to the senses of that pleased and listening assembly. The services ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... intoning of the priest in the ritualistic service of the Church, but when applied to the opera it became an important means of securing dramatic effects, especially in situations in which the action of the play moved along rapidly. Recitative is thus seen to be a species of musical declamation. ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens

... museum (Musee Dupuytren), for medical students. In this hall was laid the body of Marat after his assassination by Charlotte Corday, and the famous club of the Cordeliers, where the gentler rhetoric of Camille Desmoulins vied with the thunderous declamation of Danton to stir republican fervour, met in the Hall of Theology. We pass to No. 5, where are some remains of the old School of Surgery or Guild of SS. Cosmas and Damian, founded by St. Louis; adjacent stood the church of St. ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... essay, for instance, entitled "Vanity of Vanities," is full of the sense of vanity of human effort. And yet against the whole current of this tendency to despondency and despair, we have such an essay as "Are we Wealthy?" in which he declared the day of declamation has passed, but that all things are possible to organisation. "In many respects it is a good world, but it might be made better, nobler, finer in every quarter, if the poor would only recognise wise ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... long been supposed the source of every corruption in government, and the immediate cause of faction, sedition, civil wars, and the total loss of liberty. It was, therefore, universally regarded as a vice, and was an object of declamation to all satirists, and severe moralists. Those, who prove, or attempt to prove, that such refinements rather tend to the increase of industry, civility, and arts regulate anew our MORAL as well as POLITICAL sentiments, and represent, as ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... Times of November, 1828, he thus expressed himself: "It requires no spirit of prophecy to predict that it (the petition) will create great opposition. An attempt will be made to frighten Northern 'dough-faces' as in case of the Missouri question. There will be an abundance of furious declamation, menace, and taunt. Are we, therefore, to approach the subject timidly—with half a heart—as if we were treading on forbidden ground? No, indeed, but earnestly, fearlessly, as becomes men, who are determined to clear their country and themselves ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... peek sight of his rifle, and there was something always in the feel of a gun that lifted him to higher moods. And yet one could reach a tender spot in him without the aid of a gun. That winter vacation I set myself to study things for declamation—specimens of the eloquence of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay and James Otis and Patrick Henry. I practiced them in the barn, often, in sight and hearing of the assembled herd and some of those fiery passages were rather too loud and threatening for the peace and comfort of my audience. ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... at the pomp than the strife of words. We feel that never were lungs so puffed with the wind of declamation, on moral and religious subjects, as now. We are tempted to implore these "word-heroes," these word-Catos, word-Christs, to beware of cant [Footnote: Dr. Johnson's one piece of advice should be written on every door: "Clear your mind of cant." But Byron, to whom it was so acceptable, in ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... from a desire to revive the ancient Greek drama, in which music was united with poetry, represents at the same time a reaction against this unintelligible Netherland style. The new opera at first went to the opposite extreme, making the distinct declamation of the text its principal object and neglecting vocal ornamentation, and even melody, on purpose. The famous vocalist and teacher, Caccini, although he taught his pupils how to sing trills and roulades, ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... faced his audience with a tranquil mien and a beaming aspect that was never dimmed. He spoke, and in the measured cadence of his quiet voice there was intense feeling, but no declamation, no passionate appeal, no superficial and feigned emotion. It was simple colloquy—a gentleman conversing. Unconsciously and surely, the ear and heart were charmed. How was it done? Ah! how did Mozart do it, how Raphael? The secret of the ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson

... no Catholic, I could not but regard the superiority of that kind of preaching— for visiting the sick, consoling the afflicted, and rebuking sin by daily admonitions, is the true preaching of the Gospel— over the pompous declamation which now too ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... surprising turns of sentiment and contrasts of feeling. Throughout this scene Parsifal's instinct is absolutely true and sure. Everything Kundry says about his mother, Herzeleide, he feels; but every attempt to make him accept her instead he resists. Her desperate declamation is splendid. Her heartrending sense of misery and piteous prayer for salvation, her belief that before her is her savior could she but win him to her will, the choking fury of baffled passion, the steady and ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis

... implacable resentments, which, kept him behind men of less aptitude for public service; but he was always a central figure in any assemblage favoured with his presence. He had a marvellous force of oratory. His, voice, his gestures, his solemn pauses, followed by lofty and sustained declamation, proved irresistible and sometimes overwhelming in their effect. But it was his misfortune to be an orator with jaundiced vision, who seemed not always to see that principles controlled oftener than rhetoric. Yet, he willingly walked on ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... Vain declamation regarding the provisions of law for the extradition of fugitives from service, with occasional episodes of frantic effort to obstruct their execution by riot and murder, continued for a brief time to agitate certain localities. But the true principle of leaving each State and Territory to regulate ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... of these, referring to the loves of certain sailors, is not very decent, but I had not the remotest conception of its impropriety, and so proceeded to repeat it. A saint of virtue must have laughed at such a declamation. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... be imagined how much Shakespeare excells in accommodating his sentiments to real life, but by comparing him with other authours. It was observed of the ancient schools of declamation, that the more diligently they were frequented, the more was the student disqualified for the world, because he found nothing there which he should ever meet in any other place. The same remark may be applied to every stage but that of Shakespeare. ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson

... consider not whether the Romish religion is true or false: build nothing on one or the other supposition. Therefore, away with all your common-place declamation about intolerance and persecution for religion! Suppose every word of Pope Pius's creed to be true! Suppose the Council of Trent to have been infallible; yet I insist upon it that no government not Roman Catholic ought to tolerate men of the ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... differences were impossible, or, if questioned, stated his views with caution and consideration. It was only with the noisy and violent upholders of long-grounded error—error which they were too feeble to maintain except by mean invective or ignorant declamation—that Julian used the keen edge of his sarcasm, or the weighty sword of his moral indignation. He was not the man to bow down before the fool's-cap of tyrannous and blatant ignorance. If he could have chosen one utterance from the holy Scriptures, which to him was more precious in its full meaning ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... which clearely shineth in ancient writers of their kind: as in the Lord of louinille, familiar unto Saint Lewis; Eginard, Chancellor unto Charlemaine; and of more fresh memorie in Philip de Comines. This is rather a declamation or pleading for King Francis against the Emperour Charles the fifth, than an Historic. I will not beleeve they have altered or changed any thing concerning the generalitie of matters, but rather to wrest ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... rejoicing in spirit; which thanks, by the by, consisted wholly in telling the Almighty what he was; and informing, with very particular precision, what they were who addressed him; for Wringhim's whole system of popular declamation consisted, it seems, in this—to denounce all men and women to destruction, and then hold out hopes to his adherents that they were the chosen few, included in the promises, and who could never fall away. It would appear that this pharisaical doctrine ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... a long pinch of snuff, and replied, 'Very well, Alan; very well indeed. I wish Mr. Crossbite or Counsellor Pest had heard you; they must have acknowledged that you have a talent for forensic elocution; and it may not be amiss to try a little declamation at home now and then, to gather audacity and keep yourself in breath. But touching the subject of this paraffle of words, it's not worth a pinch of tobacco. D'ye think that I care for Mr. Herries of Birrenswork more than any other gentleman who comes here about business, although ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... to a genius, like him, "broken-hearted." He'd " no doubt but his friends in Parnassus must know How his fine declamation was laugh'd at below; And how Keate, like a blockhead ungifted with brains, Had neglected to grant him a prize for his pains. He was sure, if such conduct continued much longer, The school must grow weaker, and indolence stronger; That the rights of sixth form would be laid in the dust, And ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... was just wondering whether she would not forbid the performance after all, when, at the very moment that Aglaya commenced her declamation, two new guests, both talking loudly, entered from the street. The new arrivals were General Epanchin and ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... theory. Milton's prose style seems to be the result of a conscious effort to run English into classical moulds. Burke's mannerism does not appear in his early writings, and we can trace its development from the imitation of Bolingbroke to the last declamation against the Revolution. But Johnson seems to have written Johnsonese from his cradle. In his first original composition, the preface to Father Lobo's 'Abyssinia,' the style is as distinctive as in the 'Rambler.' The Parliamentary ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... exemplary of all the boys of his time. So was the Ferry Boy, and the Pioneer Boy so. "Nat"—we blame and protest, but we join in the plan of using this undignified sobriquet—Nat was the one that swam three rods under water; Nat astonished the school with the eloquence of his declamation; it was Nat that got all the glory of the games; it was of no use for any one to try for any prize where Nat was a competitor. And as Nat's neighbors thought of Nat, so thought Abe's—we shudder at the sound—Abe's neighbors of Abe, the Pioneer Boy. Of what Salmon's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... I might live a hundred years, but I could never recover from the effects of this withering blow—and never forget it! Hereafter—You smile, Mrs. Graham,' said I, suddenly stopping short, checked in my passionate declamation by unutterable feelings to behold her actually smiling at the picture of ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... some shrewdness and experience, who had served as a soldier in the British army. Amongst others was the officer who commanded at the gate. After a few observations, this gentleman, who was a good-looking young man of five-and-twenty, began to burst forth in violent declamation against the English nation and government, who, he said, had at all times proved themselves selfish and deceitful, but that their present conduct in respect to Spain was particularly infamous, for though it was in ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... Poor Richard are anticipated here, as quaint, as terse, and as sagacious in the ancient Jew as in the modern American. Our scientific teachers would replace eloquent declamation concerning vices, such as drunkenness and debauchery, by illustrated lectures upon the physiological effects of violations of nature's laws. They would teach men that the laws of health are found in the laws of temperance and purity. The Hebrew sages had this vision ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... for "Ca ira." It was succeeded by a harangue of the Admiral against the captured ex-patriot. Cyrene followed with horror every word of his oratory, every movement of his declamation, the air of pride with which he played upon the passions of the Sans-culottes, and the wicked sweep of the ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... not only is not the Catholic teaching of the first centuries, but neither again are the dogmas of Rome, the objects of the protest of the compilers of the Articles, but the dominant errors, the popular corruptions, authorized or suffered by the high name of Rome. The eloquent declamation of the Homilies finds its matter almost exclusively in the dominant errors. As to Catholic teaching, nay as to Roman dogma, of such theology those Homilies, as I have shown, contained ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... fascinated by the picture she made of passion and incensed declamation that he did not attempt to open the letter, and he wondered why there was such a difference between the effect of her temper on him now and the effect of it those long years ago. He had no feeling of uneasiness in her presence now, no sense of irritation. In spite of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the King?" He spoke harshly, even aggressively, and as if combating some undeveloped argument of La Mothe's. A burst of temper may not convince a man's own conscience, or quiet its uneasiness, but it silences its voice for a time as declamation can always silence pleading. "Who are we to question his justice or deny its right to strike? And it is as his arm of justice that you ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... exercise he was very fond in his young days, and in which he excelled. He was a great reader, never idle, but always had a book in his hand,—a volume of poetry or one of the novels of Scott or Cooper. His fondness for plays and declamation is illustrated by the story told by a younger brother, who remembers being wrapped up in a shawl and kept quiet by sweetmeats, while he figured as the dead Caesar, and his brother, the future historian, delivered the speech of ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... genius. At fifteen, he stood as candidate for admission to the foundation at Westminster, and carried it triumphantly. Shortly after, having by some misdemeanour displeased the masters, he was compelled to compose, and recite in the school-room, a poetical declamation in Latin, by way of penance. This he accomplished in a masterly manner—to the astonishment of his masters, and the delight of his school-fellows—some of whom became afterwards distinguished men. We can fancy the scene at the day of the recitation—the ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... kind,—that even these, though among the simplest and obscurest of beings, have yet price in the eyes of their Maker, and that the death of one of them cannot take place but by His permission, has long been the subject of declamation in our pulpits, and the ground of much sentiment in nursery education. But the declamation is so aimless, and the sentiment so hollow, that, practically, the chief interest of the leisure of mankind has been found in the destruction of ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... seminaries and colleges, the greater part of the selections, nearly three hundred in number, have been chosen from those of acknowledged excellence, and of unquestionable merit as exercises for recitation and declamation. This department comprises every variety of style necessary ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... deserting criticism to devote itself to declamation and utopia and in mingling with political and religious intrigues, has betrayed its mission and misunderstood the character of the century. The revolution of 1830 demoralized us; socialism is making us effeminate. Like political economy, whose contradictions it simply sifts again, socialism ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... secret now as then. I don't think it was intellect; for I am afraid that when Nature designed me the "shining" element was left out. Somehow, at school, the composition sent to the village journal was never mine; the declamation repeated at every fresh arrival of directors was always another's; and if, by any chance, a visitor asked to hear a recitation, under no circumstances was I ever invited to show off. My modest part in ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... rapid vibrato is comparable on the violin to the tremulando of the singer. At the same time the vibrato used to excess is quite as bad as an excessive tremulando in the voice. But control of the bow is the key to the gates of the great field of declamation, it is the means of articulation and accent, it gives character, comprising the entire scale of the emotions. In fact, declamation with the violin bow is very much like declamation in dramatic art. And the attack of the bow on the string should be as incisive ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens

... Squeers might have declaimed, or how stormy a discussion his declamation might have led to, nobody knows. Being interrupted, at this point, by the arrival of the coach and an attendant who was to bear him company, he perched his hat with great dignity on the top of the handkerchief that bound his head; ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... intellect; but he was solitary no longer, having found his tongue and among his more intellectual schoolfellows an interested audience. While yet a boy, he would hold an audience spellbound by his eloquent declamation or the fervor of his argument till, as Lamb, who was one of his hearers, tells us, "the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the inspired charity boy!" That is the way his conversation,—or monologue, as it often was,—affected not boys only, but men, and ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... equally his skill, as well as his lack of principle, in the field of diplomacy. He had won admiration from his enemies by his evident freedom from the revolutionary fanaticism, and his contempt for declamation about "the rights of man." Returning to Paris, he was received with acclamation, but thought it politic to avoid publicity, and to live quietly ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... of Oliver Optic, gives every other week a selection for Declamation, marked for delivery according to the most approved rules of elocution; ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins

... by way of declamation against the abolition of lanthorns. Your lordship however does not imagine I shall say any thing upon affairs so common as the glass lanthorn, the horn lanthorn, and the perforated tin lanthorn. This last indeed is most to my purpose, ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin

... show that the cultivation of science produces specific moral evils is feeble, and has little ingenuity; it is a declamation rather than an argument; and in the end he makes concessions which undo the effect of his impeachment. The essay did not establish even a plausible case, but it was paradoxical and suggestive, and attracted more attention ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... style in which she gives the sense of her author, the refinement of her taste and her clear and distinct utterance, must always ensure to her the approbation of an enlightened audience; we feel some reluctance in adding that her uniformity of declamation, and something in her tones approaching to monotony, retard her progress to that excellence to which the qualifications abovementioned ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... and declamation teach economy in words; show the pupils by illustration and example how much better they look when ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell

... its injustice to the white inhabitants of the District of Columbia. Indeed, the argument on that side of the question is, when divested of all that is immaterial, meretricious, and extravagant, reduced almost entirely to that single position. Abstract this from the excited declamation to which you have listened, and what is left is but the old revolting argument in favor of slavery, and a selfish appeal to prejudice and ignorance. It is insisted that a majority of the white voters of the District ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... out the power of the Latin language. Professor Ramsay, while alluding to the melancholy tenderness of Tibullus, the exquisite ingenuity of Ovid, the inimitable felicity and taste of Horace, the gentleness and splendor of Virgil, and the vehement declamation of Juvenal, thinks that had the verse of Lucretius perished we should never have known that the Latin could give utterance to the grandest conceptions, with all that self-sustained majesty and harmonious swell in which the Grecian muse rolls forth ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... occasionally looked in upon me, generally late in the afternoon, when I could call the day's work done and could talk French for half an hour with him, in place of taking a walk. He was strongly dramatic, like Sorel, but in a different way. Sorel was intense; Carron was theatral. He was very fond of declamation; and seeing from the first my wish to learn French,—which Sorel would never very definitely recognize,—he often recited to me, for ear practice, and in an exceedingly effective way, passages ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin

... sprite that was to prove a host. Talented and invaluable lieutenant that he was, Mr. Tooting had become an exile, to explain to any audience who should make it worth his while the mysterious acts by which the puppets on the stage were moved, and who moved them; who, for instance, wrote the declamation which his Excellency Asa Gray recited as his own. Mr. Tooting, as we have seen, had a remarkable business head, and combined with it—as Austen Vane remarked—the rare instinct of the Norway rat which goes ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... it Christophe disdainfully curled his lip.... No, he had no desire for the more acquaintance of the musicless people—(for, in the music of modern Europe, what is the place of their mandolin tinkling and melodramatic posturing declamation?).—And yet Grazia belonged to this people. To join her again, whither and by what devious ways would Christophe not have gone? He would win through by shutting his eyes ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... this speech for Sextius is a declamation against Vatinius, who was one of the witnesses employed by the prosecutor. Instead of examining this witness regularly, he talked him down by a separate oration. We have no other instance of such a forensic ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... one is also least likely to secure popular praise. The extreme conclusions, peppery rhetoric, and passionate declamation of the leaders on both sides, who aim at sensation and victory, are surest to awaken the enthusiasm of the extremists, who always direct the admiring gaze of heir parasites to the favorite representatives of their own party, their ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... remain at home, wasting my time in inglorious ease and safety, while they were disfiguring the fair face of our favoured Isle with blood and conquest. My father, who had frequently heard me burst out in loud declamation and expressions of a patriotic feeling of abhorrence, and threaten defiance in case any attempt at invasion was made, began to reason with me upon this subject; and he trusted that I should never put myself forward to enter any of the volunteer corps, as they were called; adding ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... that you have produced a play called Othello on more than one occasion; perhaps you will inform us whether the following passages are in your opinion suitable for public declamation? (Mr. FUSSLER then proceeded to read several extracts to which he objected on account ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various

... for the ordeal through which the character of Coriolanus is to be displayed. Yet when Hecuba at last is reached the interest of the situation makes itself felt with force. The massive presence and stalwart declamation of Edwin Forrest made him superb in this character; but the embodiment of Coriolanus by McCullough, while equal to its predecessor in physical majesty, was superior to it in intellectual haughtiness and in refinement. ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... regulated by the very same principles which regulate that of every other sort of labour; and that of the noblest and most useful, produces nothing which could afterwards purchase or procure an equal quantity of labour. Like the declamation of the actor, the harangue of the orator, or the tune of the musician, the work of all of them perishes in the ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... contemptuously; Montoni smiled too, but he also listened. Verezzi then proceeded with vehement declamation and assertion, till he was stopped by an argument of Orsino, which he knew not how to answer better than by invective. His fierce spirit detested the cunning caution of Orsino, whom he constantly opposed, and whose inveterate, though silent, hatred he had long ago incurred. And Montoni ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... cuts, the public must be deceived as to the duration of the performance by your making the singers pronounce the recitatives as vividly and as speakingly as possible; it is quite possible for them to sing them in the proper tempo without giving interest to them by warmth and truth of declamation. Moreover, the performance will, of its own accord, become more compact as time goes on. I have made this experience at the performances of my operas which I conducted myself, the first performances always lasting a little longer than the subsequent ones, ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... to bring forward a sufficient number of examples in confirmation of the laws explained," in which purpose he has most admirably succeeded. The work contains forty-seven wood cuts, and will be a valuable addition to any library. We would recommend it especially to teachers of vocal music and declamation. ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... the authenticity of which I pledge myself, will afford a better illustration of this monster's character, than whole pages of general declamation and invective. At the period of his government cattle were very scarce in the colony, and the stockholders were very tenacious of allowing their cows to be milked, from the injury which it did the calves. Milk was in ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... particular interest to schools, Exercises in Declamation are selected, and marked for delivery, illustrated by engraved figures. This is an original feature, not to be found in any other ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May

... and perfect in its way; nothing more free from any effort at orating; all was in the most quiet and natural manner possible. The second piece was a rendering of Poe's "Bells,'' and was a most amazing declamation, the different sorts of bells being indicated by changes of voice ranging from basso profondo to the highest falsetto, and the feelings aroused in the orator being indicated by modulations which must have cost ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... with other men's fortunes? Am I all this time deceiving myself with some wretched sophistry? Am I, then, an intellectual Don Juan, reckless of human minds, as he was of human bodies; a spiritual libertine? But why this wild declamation? Whatever I have done, it is too late to recede; even this very moment delay is destruction, for now it is not a question as to the ultimate prosperity of our worldly prospects, but the immediate safety of our very bodies. Poison! O God! O God! Away with all ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... What's it to me whether his talk is the voice of destiny or simply a bit of clap-trap eloquence? There's a good deal of eloquence of one sort or another produced in both Americas. The air of the New World seems favourable to the art of declamation. Have you forgotten how dear Avellanos can hold ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... The attempt was mere matter of curiosity and speculation. If any man, as idle as myself, should take the trouble to review and canvass my arguments I am ready to yield so indifferent a point to better reasons. Should declamation alone be used to contradict me, I shall not think I am less ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole

... in his. Every character has many aspects, but the world is little disposed to see more than one side of George Sand's—namely, that which is most conspicuous by its defiance of law and custom, and finds expression in loud declamation and denunciation. To observe her in one of her more lovable attitudes of mind, we will transport ourselves ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... converse, and that such a theme suited my powers and would be a welcome offering to the god, I begin at the outset of my book by making one of my fellow students of Athens demand of Persius in Greek what was the subject of the declamation delivered by myself on the previous day in the temple of Aesculapius. As the dialogue proceeds I introduce Severus to their company. His part is written in the language of Rome. For Persius, although a master of Latin, shall yet to-day speak to ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... huge Goliath decorated with a militia belt and sword, and a spear like a weaver's beam indeed, enchained everybody's attention. Even the peccant schoolmaster and his pretended letters were forgotten, while the sapient Goliath, every time that he raised the spear, in the energy of his declamation, to thump upon the stage, picked away fragments of the low ceiling, which fell conspicuously on his great shock of black hair. At last, with the crowning threat, up went the spear for an astounding thump, and down ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... both men and things. Yet we hear the same old style of declamation. There are those who wish to plough up the soil which the harrow of the revolution went over yesterday; and they believe they are marching in the way of progress. They do not see that they have mistaken their age, and that the bold attempts ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... n't talk of nature or naturalness in acting or in anything. I tell you nature is poor stuff. It can't go alone. Amateur acting—they get it up at church sociables nowadays—is apt to be as near nature as a school-boy's declamation. Acting ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... near; the desire to emigrate to the west has increased, and everybody in the Atlantic states has become interested and inquires about the Great Valley. That respectable place, so much the theme of declamation and inquiry abroad, "The Far West," has gone from this region towards the setting sun. Its exact locality has not yet been settled, but probably it may soon be found along the gulf of California, or near Nootka Sound. And if distance is to be measured by time, and the ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... deserve. However, I know a lady who possesses a powerful, masculine voice, and who is a very popular speaker, but she is an exception. Anyhow I believe the worst speaker, male or female, could improve by practising private declamation, and awakening to the importance ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang



Words linked to "Declamation" :   oratory, harangue, philippic, declaim, recitation, tirade



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