"Exordium" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all the erring lambs to be received again into the bosom of the fold. So far from manifesting an outward hostility, the papal demeanor was conciliating. The letters of invitation from the Pope to the princes were sent by a legate, each commencing with the exordium, "To my beloved son," and were all sent back to his Holiness, contemptuously, with the coarse jest for answer, "We believe our mothers to have been honest women, and hope that we had better fathers." The great council had not yet given its decisions. Marriages were of continual ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of the negro's present degraded condition; and we must accept the equal fact of his being a man, with a soul as precious, in the sight of God, as the soul of his white brother. For the day when the sublime exordium of the Declaration of Independence could be stigmatized as a 'glittering generality,' is gone by. The basis of our American system of government, it is no longer doubted, is the equality of all men before the law, as the basis of our Christian faith is the equality ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... exile from Athens at this period, and may probably have been at Sparta, and heard Alcibiades speak), we are at loss whether most to admire or abhor his subtile and traitorous 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 Athenian democracy, he ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... scholar requires, to extract it entire:—"Venia," he says, "is here nothing else than what we, in the language of modesty, call an apology, and has respect to the very justification he has just offered in the foregoing exordium. For Tacitus there appeals to the usage, not of remote antiquity only, but of later times also, to justify his design of writing the biography of a distinguished man. There would have been no need of such an apology in other times. In other times, dispensing with ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... 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 of the day. ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... you, mate! you could ha' seed it afore if you'd only used your eyes," replied Tom to this exordium, laughing again; "but, let's stow all such flummery now about ghostesses an' sich like, for it's all moonshine when you looks into the matter; an' you, an' Charley, an' the stooard here, have been all busy rigging up 'duppies,' ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... 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 tyrant of Macedon. But Beecher's criticisms ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... to deal in commonplaces of description, of reflection, and of sentiment. Those commonplaces, however, are often made very impressive by the lofty, the magisterial, the imperial, manner of the preacher in treating them. We exhibit a specimen, a single specimen only, and a brief one, in the majestic exordium to the funeral oration on ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... prose at present. He had undoubtedly an excellent ear, and we must conclude he must have succeeded considerably in erotic or pastoral poetry, from the following stanza's, in his Defiance to Envy, which may be considered as an exordium to his poetical writings. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... 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 own comforts by a wasteful expenditure and useless parade, with which they think ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... deprive thy friends of thy presence!" returned the Jinnee, who was apparently touched by this exordium, "for truly thou art ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... edition in question, and has, I think, mistaken the whole affair. The Irish editor did not attempt to unite Malone's fragments—quite the contrary—he left Malone's first fragment as he found it; but he took the second fragment, namely, the exordium of the pretended will of John Shakspeare, and substituted it bodily as the exordium of the will of William Shakspeare, suppressing altogether the real exordium of the latter. So that this Irish will begins, "I, John Shakspeare," &c., and ends, "by me, William Shakspeare." I have no ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... infamous fiction of Spelling-Books: "A more lying, roundabout, puzzle-headed delusion than that by which we Confuse the clear instincts of truth in our accursed systems of spelling, was never concocted by the father of falsehood." Such was the exordium of this famous treatise. For instance, take the monosyllable Cat. What a brazen forehead you must have when you say to an infant, c, a, t,—spell Cat: that is, three sounds, forming a totally opposite compound,—opposite in every detail, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 the action of the Lords ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... exordium I had assumed a sitting posture but at her coarse rejoinder I fell back, inexpressibly shocked, and lay staring upon the dark, tingling with mortification that I should have wasted myself in such vain appeal and been thus callously repulsed by one who was no more than an ignorant gipsy-wench, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... 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 ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... 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 classic ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... With this exordium, which the occasion seemed to require, let us proceed to consider the most powerful and radical measure, which belongs to the science of education, and which has been developed by ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... 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
... from sea to sky the wild farewell." Amazement and pity had thrown her into a paroxysm of grief, which is hardly allayed by her father's assurance, that "there's no harm done." After this terrible excitement follows the solemn exordium to her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... public exordium, a contemptible fellow sought a quarrel with me, and obliged me to draw in my own defence, whom, on this occasion, I ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... far beyond the poor lady's by-laws and regulations for the upbringing of families and the conduct of life. The elemental mother in her battled on the side of her only son—foolishly, irrationally, unkindly. Her exordium was as correct as could be. The tragedy shocked her, the scandal grieved her, the innuendoes of the Press she refused to believe; she sympathised with me deeply. But then she turned from me to Dale, and feminine unreason took possession of her pen. She bitterly reproached herself for ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... preparing his farewell speech, which he meant to deliver in the porch. But arriving and perceiving a crowd about it, and also, to his vast astonishment, a red baize carpet on the perron, and a butler bowing in the doorway with two footmen behind him, he coughed down his exordium, and led his daughter into the hall amid showers of rice and confetti. The bridegroom followed; and so did the wedding-guests, since no one ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... their exordium was; One word there was in all, and metre one, So that all harmony appeared ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... 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 other evening. Fancy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... degradation of my higher 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. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... 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 ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... ago—thus, after a pious exordium, the relation began—in that part of Italy called Marca, there came into a railway station a Capuchin friar of grave, thoughtful, melancholy aspect, who besought the station-master to allow him to go without ticket by the train just starting, as he greatly desired to reach ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... days 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
... long-expected argument, how court, bar, and by-standers composed themselves to hear. He spoke with great deliberation and distinctness, with singular precision and propriety of language, without any parade of rhetoric or attempt at eloquence. After a very short and appropriate exordium, he proceeded directly to the merits of the case. His words were well-weighed, and his manner was earnest and impressive. It was, in short, the perfection of reason confidently addressed to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... surveyed the processes of culture in "the Midland town"! How quickly he catches the first gesture of affectation and how deftly he sets it forth, entertained and entertaining! From the chuckling exordium of The Magnificent Ambersons it is but a step to The Age of Innocence and Main Street. Little reflective as he has allowed himself to be, he has by shrewd observation alone succeeded in writing not a few ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... perhaps, eternal." This paragraph contains the essence of a just criticism. Brilliant as the poem is, we cannot read it with unwavering belief either in the author's sincerity at the time he wrote it, or in the permanence of the emotion it describes. The exordium has a fatal note of rhetorical exaggeration, not because the kind of passion is impossible, but because Shelley does not convince us that in this instance he had really been its subject. His own critique, following so close upon the publication of "Epipsychidion," confirms the impression ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... 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 to ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... with the following brief exordium: "You see, Athenians, what forces are prepared, what numbers gathered and arrayed, what soliciting through the assembly, by a certain party—and all this to oppose the fair and ordinary course of justice in the state. As to me, I stand here in firm reliance, first ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... 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 ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... unnaturally 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 somewhat similar to Mercutio's address to Benvolio), to which is appended a satire ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... expected of lawmakers who begin with so ambitious an exordium, and who lay the cornerstone of their edifice upon the solid rock of political principle? The anti-climax of performance which followed would be laughably absurd, were it not marked by the cunning of a well-matured political plot. Their ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... spies" is of course the meaning, though it would spoil the effect of this curiously elaborate exordium if spies were actually ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... were clearly cut, simply and perfectly articulated. "It is often said that the day for speaking has passed, and that of action has arrived." It was a direct, plain introduction; not a florid exordium. The voice was clear and cold and distinct; not especially musical, not at all magnetic. The orator was incessantly moving; not rushing vehemently forward or stepping defiantly backward, with that quaint planting of the foot, like Beecher; but restlessly changing his place, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... 496. "Quis credere possit," says Baronius [Ann. Eccles., Lucae, 1741, viii. 602, in an. 496], "viguisse adhuc Romae ad Gelasii tempora, quae fuere ante exordium Urbis allata in Italiam Lupercalia?" Gelasius wrote a letter, which occupies four folio pages, to Andromachus the senator, and others, to show that the rites should be ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... Khiddr, who was the Khalifa's eyes and ears and reported to him all that went on in the gaol. It was pointed out to Feversham that if Nebbi Khiddr reported against him, he would have heavier shackles riveted upon his feet, and many unpleasant things would happen. At last came the exordium about the starving children, and Feversham begged Idris to take ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... beguiled into taking another sponge-cake. "If they'd only let us walk about 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 be off duty ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • 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
... upon it appears from the extremely interesting fact, preserved by Phillips, that Satan's address to the Sun is part of a dramatic speech which, according to Milton's plan in 1642 or 1643, would have formed the exordium of his tragedy. Of the literary sources which may have originated or enriched the conception of "Paradise Lost" in Milton's mind we shall speak hereafter. It must suffice for the present to remark that his purpose had from the first been didactic. ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... on Chess. It is in the handwriting of a celebrated poet of the last century; but whether a mere transcript or a version of his own, is more than I can affirm. Now, I shall feel obliged by any information on the subject, whether positive or negative, and transcribe the exordium with that view. It is not the version which was made by George Jeffreys, and revised by ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... placed 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, ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... 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 of love and charm: ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... to the results of his long and anxious thoughts: I have purposely twisted his exordium into an echo ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... purporting to be 'Morning Conversations' 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 Imperial Wardenship of Nurnberg, some six hundred years ago or more, has consistently travelled ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... only the present materials of history, but also by reaction the materials of the past. Much that is supposed to be complete is seen to be unfinished; the done becomes undone, and the peroration of an epoch has to be rewritten for an exordium. ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... was much hauteur in his manner. He ate scarcely anything, and his appearance was so remarkable, as to excite the wonder of all present. At length on the third or fourth day of the council, he arose with great dignity, and solemnity of air, and commenced speaking. His exordium was for the most part a beautiful and highly wrought enconium on the character and history of the Indians; particularly of his own people, in the past. They were taken back, as by a magic spell, to primitive times. The days of their renown, ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... old-fashioned style of exordium by an old-fashioned foreman, who believed that the best results could be obtained by the most scurrilous abuse of his men—and the immediate efforts of Vienna seemed to endorse ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... more thoroughly captive than anxiety about what we have got to say. Mr. Brooke heard the laughter; but he had expected some Tory efforts at disturbance, and he was at this moment additionally excited by the tickling, stinging sense that his lost exordium was coming back to fetch him from ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... venerated the number 9 in memory of the 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
... exordium, and the imposing manner of Don Estevan, following so closely upon the jocular mien he had hitherto exhibited, made a painful impression upon the mind of the Senator. There was a short moment in which he regretted being ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... them into those bitter extremes, requested Rosader to discourse, if it were not any way prejudicial unto him, the cause of his travel. Rosader, desirous any way to satisfy the courtesy of his favorable host, first beginning his exordium with a volley of sighs, and a few lukewarm tears, prosecuted his discourse, and told him from point to point all his fortunes: how he was the youngest son of Sir John of Bordeaux, his name Rosader, how his brother sundry times had wronged him, ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... till then, pronounce, Whether on the utmost verge of our actual horizon there is not a looming as of Land; a promise of new Fortunate Islands, perhaps whole undiscovered Americas, for such as have canvas to sail thither?—As exordium to the whole, stand here the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... had 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 of taste in politics, the speech was acceptable. It so far commended itself to the editors ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... 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, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... see I mean look at 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
... Flavianus, my narrative needs not any such exordium. The occasion that caused the conversation simply demands a chorus for the action and a stage, nothing else is wanting to the drama, let us only pray to the Mother of the Muses to be propitious, and give ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... you it is far from my intention to make any formal exordium, even if I knew the exact ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 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 in a manner worthy of comparison ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... people, and the first article of the Constitution declared that "no authority shall, on any pretence whatever, be exercised over the people of the State, but such as shall be derived from and granted by them." This high-sounding exordium promised the rights of popular sovereignty; but in practice the makers of the Constitution, fearing the passions of the multitude as much as the tyranny of kings, deemed it wise to keep power in the hands of a few. A male citizen of full ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... unnatural and could not be allowed. They therefore required of the regent, in the name of religion, not to treat the people entrusted to her rule with such severity." She replied through the Count of Staremberg, her minister for German affairs, that such an exordium deserved no answer at all. From the sympathy which the German princes had shown for the Belgian fugitives it was clear that they gave less credit to the letters of the king, in explanation of his measures, than to the reports of a few worthless wretches who, in the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... used in the same hope which inspires the sandwichman to 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 and women read these golden ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... "Charley Incledon's usual exordium when people came into the tavern to hear him sing, without paying their share of the reckoning: 'If a maun, or ony maun, or ony other ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... not much like this exordium; he replied, stepping into the road at the same time, "I've no money, and the bundle contains ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... to the end of his exordium, paused a moment, and whether because he gathered confidence, whether because he realized the impressive character of the fresh matter upon which he entered, he proceeded now in a firmer, more sonorous voice: "I require and charge you both as ye will answer on the dreadful ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... apostrophe to learning, and to the enthusiasm which glows in the breasts of all her real votaries, rendering them alike indifferent to their personal ease, their temporal interests, danger, suffering, and tribulations of the spirit. After this exordium, which was pronounced to be unique for its simplicity and truth, he entered at once on the history ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... prior and that which is posterior in order; in geometry, the elements are prior to the propositions; in reading and writing, the letters of the alphabet are prior to the syllables. Similarly, in the case of speeches, the exordium is prior in order ...
— The Categories • Aristotle
... Cocker of the Michigan State University. In the "Theistic Conception of the World" he treats the first two chapters of the Bible as a poem, which he calls the "symbolical hymn of creation." It has an exordium, six strophes, each with its refrain, and an episode. He does not believe the sacred narrative intends to describe the exact mode of forming the world, nor even to set the successive events in order. It is an ascription, designed to embody in symbolical language the fact that all existence ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... arranged as to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Then there are nine ways to begin a poem and nine ways to begin a dictamen or epistle. Next he states that there are six parts to an oration: "exordium, narracio, peticio, confirmacio, confutacio, conclusio."[114] As an example of this division of the oration into parts he quotes a long poem which persuades its reader to take up the cross. Still under the general head of arrangement John explains the ten ways ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... 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 short duration, and soon gave place to others of a ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... such a massing of the quantities, whether by color, light, or shadow, as shall enable the eye to pass without obstruction, and by easy transitions, from one to another, so that it shall appear to take in the whole at a glance. This may be likened to both the exordium and peroration of a discourse, including as well the last as the first general idea. It is, in other words, a simple, connected, and concise exposition and summary ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... that is forgotten. [Nicholas Vachel Lindsay] Euchenor Chorus. [Arthur Upson] Evensong. [Ridgely Torrence] Ex Libris. [Arthur Upson] Exordium. ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... The exordium of the poem is one of some grandeur. The poet describes himself as soaring aloft to the sanctuary of wisdom where it is set in highest aether, the daughters of the Sun being his guides; under whose leading having ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... doubtful if John understood the drift of Felix's exordium, it is doubtful if he had quite listened—he having so much to not listen to at the Home Office that the practice was growing on him. A vested interest to John was a vested interest, culture was culture, and security was certainly security—none of them were symbols of age. Further, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... reader's pardon for this exordium. I have introduced it, in order to show how little chance there has been, from days long passed and gone to the present time, of studying the haunts and economy of the owl, because its unmerited bad name has created it a host ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... by this pompous and peevish exordium. It did not promise well; it sounded quite unlike Mr. Keith's usually bland address. Perhaps he had not yet breakfasted. "We ought to have waited," they thought. One of the listeners was ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... The exordium thus duly prepared, you must suppose, ladies, that the second act opens with a royal christening The Princess of Wales had been delivered of a second son. The Prince had intended his uncle, the Duke of York, Bishop of Osnaburg, should with his Majesty be godfathers. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... were, "Sir, in this age of increased and increasing civilization." Says an eminent writer, by way of comment upon these words, "It almost oppresses the imagination to picture the shoreless sea of eloquence which rolls between that exordium and the oratory to which we still are listening and hope to listen for ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... amazed speculation as to whither the orator was being led by this extraordinary exordium, but ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... on Dante, in the Foreign Quarterly Review, (ut supra), the exordium of which made me hope that the eloquent and assumption-denouncing writer was going to supply a good final account of his author, equally satisfactory for its feeling and its facts, but which ended in little better than the customary gratuitousness of wholesale panegyric, I was surprised ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... publication of her novel testified, was in theory a woman of independent views; and if in practise she sometimes failed to live up to her standard, it was rather from an irresistible tendency to adapt herself to her environment than from any conscious lack of moral courage. The Bishop's exordium had excited in her that sense of opposition which such admonitions are apt to provoke; but as he went on she felt herself gradually enclosed in an atmosphere in which her theories vainly gasped for breath. The Bishop had the immense dialectical advantage of invalidating any conclusions ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... 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 classed it ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... islanders by a flourish on the tight-rope of sublimity. But to his vexation a native Greek (viz., a Smyrniot), then by accident in London, called upon him immediately after the publication, and, laying his finger on a line in the exordium (as it then stood), said, 'Sare, I am one countryman of Homer's. He write de Iliad; you write de Henriade; but Homer vos never able in all de total whole of de Iliad to write de verse like dis.' Upon which the Greek showed him a ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Sypher entered on the exordium of the speech which convinced her of the diabolical noisomeness of the Jebusa Jones unguent. His peroration summed up the contest as ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... get up to speak in a public assembly, provided with a paper of notes written in pencil: during the exordium of his speech, he thumbed his notes with incessant agitation; when he looked at the paper, he found that the words were totally obliterated; he was obliged to apologize to his audience; and, after much hesitation, sat down abashed. ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 bounds of possibility. Yet in the Syro-Hexaplar text the first five verses are obelised, ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... exordium which prefaces the Declaration of Rights we see the solemn and majestic spectacle of a nation opening its commission, under the auspices of its Creator, to establish a Government, a scene so new, and so transcendantly ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... exordium, Mr Ralph Nickleby took a newspaper from his pocket, and after unfolding it, and looking for a short time among ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... droning such palpably empty editorial nonsense as that into a man's ears. Now, I would be glad to ask you—merely to ask you, as a rational woman, Mrs. Melwyn—what possible amusement or profit can be drawn from a long exordium which says absolutely nothing—tells one absolutely nothing but what every one knew before—stuff with which all editors of newspapers seem to think it necessary to preface their remarks. What in the name of—is the use of wasting ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... rarely spoken of as a whole, but in three portions, as if each were a complete work. The first is the long exordium, exhausting the pessimistic title (contempt of the world), and passing on to the second, where begins the real "Laus Patriae Coelestis." This being cut in two, making a third portion, has enriched the Christian world with two of its best hymns, "For Thee, O Dear, Dear Country," and "Jerusalem ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... specialists. I propose presently to print a few samples of her workmanship, and a list of her principal receipts in that section of the book with which I am just now concerned. First of all, here is the Preface, which begins, as we see, by a little piece of plagiarism from Nott's exordium:— ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... the proofs of the suit were piled up in Ciceronian periphrases, flanked with quotations from Plautus, his favorite comic author. We regret that we are not able to offer to our readers this remarkable piece. The orator pronounced it with marvellous action. Before he had finished the exordium, the perspiration was starting from his brow, and ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Royal Aquarium on September 28, 1883, on the Art of Human 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 here, just ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... an admirable speech too. It began with 'My dear friends,' and the exordium struck at once that paternal note which makes him, with all his foibles, so lovable. 'They' must excuse him if he now took his departure; for he had arrived at an age to feel the length of a long day—even ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... intellectual force and moral courage. Many may recall him as the hero of a story—possibly apocryphal—in which he figures as returning to his professorial chair after an absence of over four years (passed in the prison-cells of the Inquisition) and beginning his exordium to his students with the imperturbable remark: 'We were saying yesterday.' Mainly on this uncertain basis is constructed the current legend that Luis de Leon was a bloodless philosopher, incapable of resentment, and, indeed, without ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... so soon as ever an orator declared in the assembly "Demos, I love you ardently; 'tis I alone, who dream of you and watch over your interests"; at such an exordium you would look like a cock flapping his wings or a bull tossing ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... differ, a large proportion of them pretending that their 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 ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... who was to have read an essay had fallen ill, and the freshman had been asked to step into the breach. This he did, with an essay on 'The Ideals of Mazzini,' and with strange and terrific effect. During the exordium we raised our eyebrows. Presently we were staring open-mouthed. Where were we? In what wild dream were we drifting? To this day I can recite the peroration. Mazzini is dead. But his spirit lives, and can never be crushed. And his motto—the motto that he planted ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... 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 ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... she always had recourse to the longest and the strongest words she could possibly lay her hands upon; and Mary had been well accustomed to hear her childish faults and juvenile indiscretions denounced in the most awful terms as crimes of the deepest dye. Many an exordium she had listened to on the tearing of her frock, or the losing of her glove, that might have served as a preface to the "Newgate Calendar," "Colquhoun on the Police," or any other register of crimes. Still she had always been able to detect some clue to ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... to Rogers' 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 ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... the use of pictures in the churches. It was made the occasion of "charitable rebuke" and then of formal complaint against Roussel by his fellow canons, that he failed to repeat the angelic salutation, according to the orthodox practice, after the exordium of his sermon. To the combined exhortations and threats of his accusers Roussel replied in the chapter that, if he had done wrong, it belonged to the bishop to reprove him, but that as to himself he esteemed the repetition of the Lord's Prayer quite as efficacious as the recital ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... earl of Oxford, and Henry St. John, esq; afterwards lord viscount Bolingbroke, and other noble patrons. His swelling stile, it must be owned, was better suited to a subject of this gravity and importance, than to that of a light and ludicrous nature: the exordium of this piece is poetical, and has an allusion to that of Spencer's ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... man's blood better than whisky, and that he never spared it out of pity,—adding as the cause, and seeming well pleased that he could boast a deficiency so well befitting a warrior, that he had "no heart,"—his interior being framed of stone as hard as the flinty rock under his feet. This exordium finished, he proceeded to bestow sundry abusive epithets upon the prisoner, charging him with having put his young men to a great deal of needless trouble, besides having killed several; for which, he added, the Longknife ought to expect ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... so long an exordium to excuse thee, poor Parson Dale, for turning up that ace of spades with so triumphant a smile at thy partner? I must own that nothing which could well add to the parson's offence was wanting. In the first place, he did not play ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... aera, the cathedral[73] of Rouen is unquestionably the most interesting building; and it is so spacious, so grand, so noble, so elegant, so rich, and so varied, that, as the Italians say of Raphael, "ammirar non si puo che non s'onori."—By an exordium like this, I am aware that an expectation will be raised, which it will be difficult for the powers of description to gratify; but I have still felt that it was due to the edifice, to speak of it as ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... bishop was pierced to the quick with grief, and on the next day, Easter-Sunday, preached a most zealous and eloquent sermon, Against the Games and Shows of the Theatre and Circus. Indignation made him not so much as mention the paschal solemnity;{242} but by an abrupt exordium he burst into the most vehement pathos, as follows: "Are these things to be borne? Can they be tolerated? I appeal to yourselves, be you your own judges. Thus did God expostulate with the Jews."[17] This exclamation he often repeated to assuage his grief. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... and affectation were broken down by this fearful exordium. She sobbed, shuddered, and, for once perhaps in her life, felt the real, not the assumed necessity, of putting her handkerchief to her eyes. Lord ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... fatherly word of friendly recognition of maiden speech of youngest CAVENDISH. No mere compliment this, extorted by old associations and personal predilections. Young VICTOR went about his work in style reminiscent of middle-aged HARTINGTON. Abstained from oratorical effort. Neither exordium nor peroration. Got some business in hand, and plodded on till it was finished. Modest mien, simple, unaffected manner, instantly won ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... 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, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... the war, he begins thus: "That vilest of all wretches, Vologesus, entered upon the war for these reasons." Such is this historian's manner. Another, a close imitator of Thucydides, that he may set out as his master does, gives us an exordium that smells of the true Attic honey, and begins thus: "Creperius Calpurnianus, a citizen of Pompeia, hath written the history of the war between the Parthians and the Romans, showing how they fought with one another, commencing at the time when it first broke out." After this, ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... 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, parted like ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... times. Melbourne's severe remarks provoked the Bishop of London (Blomfield), who had not intended to speak, and he said to the Archbishop, 'I must answer this,' who replied, 'Do.' His abrupt and animated exordium, 'And so, my Lords,' was very ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... which tells us how Browning wished his metrical movement to be judged. This is the exordium, and it is already full of his theory of life—the soul forced from within to aspire to the perfect whole, the necessary failure, the despair, the new impulse to love arising out of the despair; failure making fresh growth, fresh uncontentment. God has sent ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... solicitor of Warwick, and Thomas Russell, 'esquier,' of Stratford, were the overseers; it was proved by John Hall, the poet's son-in-law and joint-executor with Mrs. Hall, in London on June 22 following. The religious exordium is in conventional phraseology, and gives no clue to Shakespeare's personal religious opinions. What those opinions were, we have neither the means nor the warrant for discussing. But while it is possible to quote from the plays many contemptuous references ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... to 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 ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... maritime power of France 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, is quite a pointed remark. Throughout ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... to ask is liberty to look at 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 to be always making mischief by well-meant efforts to forward her interest. He, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... 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 ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... instructive detail; and his first 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... 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 ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... this realm to that of king, make me find everything easy and honorable." M. de Calonne had reserved to himself the duty of explaining the great projects he had suggested to the king. "Gentle men," said he in his exordium, "the orders I am under at present do me the more honor in that the views of which the king has charged me to set before you the sum and the motives have been entirely adopted by him personally." Henry IV. might have said to the notables assembled by his successor, as he had said regarding ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... a 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. But finally the young man interrupted ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... the beautiful exordium of his invective against Rufinus, which is curiously discussed by the sceptic Bayle, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... contained in certain words in the exordium of the Fourth Gospel: "That [Word] was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... eifectively than if each was heard for the first time, because all were 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 ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... robustiously and put for it with a deal of violence" in his sacred poem entitled Davideis. In the exordium of the First ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... Schoolcraft. 'In what we have said, our object has been to expose error, and to shield ourselves from the imputation which would justly be thrown upon ourselves.' The construction of this sentence reminds us of the exordium of Deacon Strong's speech at Stonington—'the generality of mankind in general endeavor to try to take the disadvantage of the generality of mankind in general.' But not to indulge in levities on so grave a subject, we are ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... 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 concealed ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... make such an exordium, as the Cyclic writer of old: "I will sing the fate of Priam, and the noble war." What will this boaster produce worthy of all this gaping? The mountains are in labor, a ridiculous mouse will be brought forth. How much more to the purpose he, who attempts nothing improperly? ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... occasion expressed no acquiescence. She certainly supposed that a formal offer was to be made and could not but think that so singular an exordium was never before made by a gentleman in a similar position. Mr. Slope had annoyed her by the excess of his ardour. It was quite clear that no such danger was to be feared from Mr. Stanhope. Prudential motives alone ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Masters, completely flabbergasted at this exordium of mine; "I never thought, Mister Haldane, to hear you speak ag'in me like that. I allays believed you was a ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... it is reasonable to suppose, that the action of the Iliad immediately commenced. But that Statius had no design of extending the plan of the Achilleis beyond this period, is expressly declared in the exordium of the poem: ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... with no little surprise, "I beg your pardon. Your exordium was so singularly clear, that I did not understand ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton |
