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Peroration   Listen
noun
Peroration  n.  (Rhet.) The concluding part of an oration; especially, a final summing up and enforcement of an argument.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Peroration" Quotes from Famous Books



... informed him in confidence that sometimes he set Scaramouch (that was the doll's name) dancing while he was studying his briefs, and that, only the night before, he had modulated on Scaramouch's movements the peroration of his speech in defence of a woman falsely accused of poisoning her husband. The Pere Magitot seized the string with trembling fingers and saw Scaramouch throw his limbs wildly about under his manipulation like one possessed of devils in the ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... families, from the franchise. None but pure Romans, how to be discovered from the colluviet omnium gentium deposited upon the Seven Hills by centuries of immigration he does not clearly say, should be chosen to revive the fallen majesty of the Republic. See in particular the peroration of his argument (op. cit. vol. iii. p. 95). In other words, he aims at a narrow Popolo, a pura cittadinanza, in the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... confirmed and ratified by all that took place before his departure. The dinners he had to eat, the speeches he had to make and to listen to, were really terrific! One speech at the Rabelais Club had, it was said, the longest peroration on record. It was this kind of thing: "Where is our friend Irving going? He is not going like Nares to face the perils of the far North. He is not going like A—— to face something else. He is not going to China," etc.—and so on. After about ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... his race. I bade him think of the time when the Tongans, in token of magnanimous amity, rubbed noses with the white man, and of where those noses were now—between the fingers of the Caucasian. He appeared becomingly attentive, and did me the honour before I began my peroration to change the pandanus flower from the ear next to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... got to a very dangerous place—a place where the usual moral peroration lies in wait for us—that German peroration which announces universal redemption, and immediately, on that lofty note, closes the discussion. Fatherland, Morality, Humanity, Labour, Courage, Confidence—we ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... were, generally, decided improvements; but in one instance he failed lamentably. The noble peroration of Lochiel is ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous

... through it, and, intent on his improvement, Edna climbed upon a stump and delivered his speech for him, gesticulating and emphasizing just as she wished him to do. As the last words of the peroration passed her lips, and while she stood on the stump, a sudden clapping of hands startled her, and Gordon ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... of the systematists is the one most melancholy sequela of Darwinism. It seems an irony that we should read in the peroration to the Origin that when the Darwinian view is accepted "Systematists will be able to pursue their labours as at present; but they will not be incessantly haunted by the shadowy doubt whether this or that form be a true species. This, ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... is not nearly all; but I will miss out a few points, and come to my peroration. My peroration would be after this fashion. Such, I would say, is the charge against one who has been of service to His Majesty; and such is the Court (as I have described) of that same King. There is not a Court in Europe that has a Prince so noble as our own can be, of better parts, or ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... entitled to appoint its own chaplain as of a piece with the assumption of an assassin that he has a right to shoot down a man in the street—the right of brute force. This nonsensical tirade he shrieked out by way of peroration to a speech intended as a defence of the right of the Government in the matter of the chaplaincy. It is strange that the House should have listened to such balderdash, not only with patience, but even with apparent submission. Solicitor-General ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... 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 ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various

... on this planet, though whether it was the one that made the original Hyena laugh I have not been able to ascertain. It is a joke that has appeared in modified form many times since. Even that illustrious pundit, Senator Chauncey M. DeMagog uses it as his most effective peroration at this season's public banquets. I heard him myself get it off at The Egyptian Society Dinner last month, as well as at the Annual Banquet of The Sons and Daughters of the Pre-Adamite Evolution, the month before, changing the answer, however, to "when it's a jar"—which I personally ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... extremity of the room, to inform him of the liberties Storey Hunter was taking with his name. Whereupon the slandered one, with all his wrath reawakened, traversed the apartment in time to hear the emphatic peroration that, "bad as Sumner was, Benson ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... and, as Lord Shaftesbury had expressed his obligations to him on the subject, he did not doubt that if the matter came before the House of Lords, he would bestow the degree of attention on it which his lordship bestowed on all matters of importance. Working himself us as he drew near his peroration, he broke out into a blaze of eloquence which put the Lord Mayor into some fear on account of the Thames, of which he is official conservator. "The thing cannot last!" he exclaimed; "and if you don't, in less than two years from this time, say I am a true prophet, put me on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... "Toussaint L'Ouverture," a speech which may now be classed as rhetorical—even, perhaps, bombastic; but as the words fell from "Shiny's" lips their effect was magical. How so young an orator could stir so great enthusiasm was to be wondered at. When, in the famous peroration, his voice, trembling with suppressed emotion, rose higher and higher and then rested on the name "Toussaint L'Ouverture," it was like touching an electric button which loosed the pent-up feelings of his listeners. They actually rose ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson

... of Chatham, Burke, Sheridan; since the day of Brougham and Canning; nay, ever since the day of Bright, Gladstone, Disraeli. Burke, as everyone knows, once brought down a Brummagem dagger and cast it on the floor of the House. Lord Chancellor Brougham in a peroration once knelt to the assembled peers, 'Here the noble lord inclined his knee to the Woolsack' is, if I remember, the stage direction in Hansard. Gentlemen, though in the course of destiny one or another of you may be called upon to speak daggers ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... criticise the most beautiful picture or the grandest structure, but to paint the one or erect the other,—hic labor, hoc opus est. One of the grandest speeches ever made, for freshness and force, was Daniel Webster's reply to Hayne; but the peroration was written and committed to memory, while the substance of it had been in his thoughts for half a winter, and his mind was familiar with the general subject. The great orator is necessarily an artist ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... Boys got back to the room the orator was winding up his speech. He finished with an eloquent peroration, and his hearers broke into applause as the last word left ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall

... fathers, who respected him for the sake of his: but he had the misfortune to be stopped in his career. For being tried by the Mamilian law, as a party concerned in the conspiracy to support Jugurtha, though he exerted all his abilities to defend himself, he was unhappily cast. His peroration, or, as it is often called, his epilogue, is still extant; and was so much in repute, when we were school-boys, that we used to learn it by heart: he was the first member of the Sacerdotal College, since the building of Rome, who was publicly tried and condemned. As to ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... Gladstone had launched a tremendous attack against his opponent. However, notwithstanding the fact that from the outset of his speech it was evident that Mr. Gladstone meant war to the knife, that as it proceeded he waxed more and more hostile, and that his peroration was couched in the most vehement terms, Disraeli remained to the finish as if utterly unmoved, sitting in his customary attitude as though he were asleep, with his arms hanging listlessly at his sides. Once only during the progress of the attack he appeared to wake ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... the metaphysical subtleties of Berkeley and Hume. They preferred the philosophy of the Essay on Man, which might be appropriated by a common-sense preacher, or the rhetoric of Eloisa and Abelard, bits of which might be used to excellent effect (as indeed Pope himself used the peroration) by a fine gentleman addressing his gallantry to a contemporary Sappho. It is only too easy to expose their shallowness, and therefore to overlook what was genuine in their feelings. After all, Pope's eminent friends were no mere tailor's blocks for the display of laced coats. Swift and Bolingbroke ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... to give the ladies' committee a general idea of it. Just see, Maggie, if I know the peroration. 'In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, these are the reasonable demands of every intelligent Englishwoman'— I had better say British woman—'and I am proud to ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie

... to have a peroration of this kind containing nothing to irritate the hearer. He specifically recalls the purpose of the speech. The final exhortation has something to stir him against the enemy, for they are represented as despising him. "For now you can ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... The Mayor's peroration annoyed Thompson; the cheers that followed it annoyed him still more, and the subsequent shower of congratulations and vigorous slaps on the back threatened to move him to reply in a speech which might have been unintelligible to ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various

... local "councilman" for the Round Hill Scouts, he brought his guest to a camp-fire meeting to talk to them. In deference to his audience, Gould told them of the boy scouts he had seen in Belgium and of the part they were playing in the great war. It was his peroration that made trouble. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... Pee-eye-em. Here a great council was held, and the proposed attempt at negotiations for peace with their ancient enemies fully discussed. While they were thus engaged, and just as Pee-eye-em had, in the energy of an enthusiastic peroration, burst the blue surtout almost up to the collar, a distant rushing sound was heard, which caused every man to spring to his feet, run out of the tent, and ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... within speaking and hearing distance," it exclaimed; "scarcely anything was more desired and more impossible." The next paper to quit the mob of scoffers was the Tatler, which said in an editorial peroration, "We cannot but feel im-pressed by the picture of a human child commanding the subtlest and strongest force in Nature to carry, like a slave, some ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... But say, Dinksy, tonight is the night and Lenox is the place. After that, if you like, I'll take up the thread of your famous ghost story, and you may refer all inquiries to me." The last word of this peroration was all but lost on stone walls, for the oncoming horde seized Jane and, exactly as she feared, demanded further details of the ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft

... of "diuturnity in monuments," and false ambition. Our old friends of humanistic learning—Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar—meet us in these frothy paragraphs. Cambyses, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, Darius, are thrown in to make the gruel of rhetoric "thick and slab." The whole epistle ends in a long-drawn peroration of invective against "that excrement in human shape," who had had the ill-luck, by pretence to scholarship, by big gains from the Papal treasury, by something in his manners alien from the easy-going customs of the Roman Court, to rouse the rancour ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... first time: "Have I done right? Have I done what Christ would have me do?" The light that went up in her was a light by which her deeds looked doubtful. If she had failed in this, in charity? She pondered the problem, while the Canon approached, gloriously, his peroration. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... spirits of Eckleton was the reflection that in a short space of time, when the important-looking gentleman in uniform who had come to meet them had said all he wanted to say on the subject of rules and regulations, they would be like that too. Happy thought! If the man bucked up and cut short the peroration, there would be time for a bathe in Cove Reservoir. Those of the corps who had been to camp in previous years felt quite limp with the joy of the thought. Why couldn't he get through with it, and give a fellow a ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse

... grew louder and the orchestra approached the peroration of the preface of the coming solo, the violinist raised his head slowly. Suddenly his eyes met the gaze of the solitary occupant of the second proscenium box. His face flushed. He looked inquiringly, almost appealingly, at her. She sat immovable and serene, a lace-framed ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa

... to propose the health of Mr Towlinson, whom to know is to esteem, and to esteem is to wish well settled in life with the object of his choice, wherever (here the silver-headed butler eyes the housemaid) she may be. Mr Towlinson returns thanks in a speech replete with feeling, of which the peroration turns on foreigners, regarding whom he says they may find favour, sometimes, with weak and inconstant intellects that can be led away by hair, but all he hopes, is, he may never hear of no foreigner never boning nothing out ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... to God alone he owed obedience, and he entertained him with many fine phrases, stuffed with evangelical quotations, to disturb the principal and fog his flock; in fact, fine argument interlarded with much sound sense. The discourse finished with a peroration full of high sounding words in honour of shrew-mice, among whom his hearer was the most illustrious and best beneath the sun; and this oration considerably bewildered the keeper of ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... pointed to what remained of his nose, the end of which had been nipped off by cold, and consequent mortification, in the anti-arctic regions. As Riprapton flourished his wooden index, in the midst of his brilliant peroration, he told the honest seaman that he had not a leg to stand upon; and all the ladies, and some of the gentlemen, too, cried out with one accord, "O fie, Captain Headman, now don't be so obstinate—surely ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... people. One incident of that memorable visit is a perfect example of that masterly power over an audience, that deep humanity, with which Mark Twain was endowed. At the banquet presided over by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, which was the signal of Mark Twain's farewell to the English people, his peroration was as follows: ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... around his neck as a concession to the popular prejudice against "the altogether." The gravity of the missionary circle was so thoroughly demoralized that it was impossible to restore order; and Miss Bascom, in the excess of her mortification, stuffed the rest of her manuscript, its eloquent peroration undelivered, into her bag. ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott

... call the architectural quality of the book, could only have been gained by such large and deep study of the art of rhetoric as is inculcated by Quintilian. The Agricola has the stateliness, the ordered movement, of a funeral oration; the peroration, as it might not unfairly be called, of the two concluding chapters, reaches the highest level of the grave Roman eloquence, and its language vibrates with a depth of feeling to which Lucretius and Virgil alone in their greatest passages offer ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... period in the proceedings, if the Learned Judge slumbered only fitfully during Mr. Dreadful's final peroration, it might have been owing to the spasmodic explosions of that Counsel's voice; but there could be no doubt that the Learned Judge slept peacefully during the earlier portions of Mr. Gentle Gammon's final effort ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton

... his duty to attend the usual Sabbath service, if he could. He went. The occasion was of unusual solemnity, as a revival was in progress. The minister preached a sermon, well calculated for effect. His peroration was a climax of great beauty. Assuming the attitude of one intently listening, he recited to the ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... now passed since Charles had breathed a prayer. There was something in everything around her that softened her heart; she buried her face in her hands and wept. An eloquent panegyric was preached by a Dominican Father. The peroration was an appeal to the assembled thousands to kneel and implore the blessing of the saint on the city and on themselves. Few sent a more fervent appeal than the poor, sinful girls who shunned the gaze of the crowd. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... moment of the declaration of war Wilson was still the man of peace, and the war upon which the nation was embarking was, in his mind, a war to ensure peace. To such a task of peace and liberation, he concluded in a peroration reminiscent of Lincoln and Luther, "we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... divert and refresh the mind, since his Orations are generally laid out according to the plan proposed in rhetorical works; the introduction, containing the ethical proof; the body of the speech, the argument, and the peroration addressing itself to the passions of the judges. In opening his case, he commonly makes a profession of timidity and diffidence, with a view to conciliate the favour of his audience; the eloquence, for instance, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... President except the twenty-second and twenty-fourth, whom it seemed the better part of valor just then to ignore. With slight emendations that same oration served admirably for high-school commencements, and it had a recognized cash value on the Chautauqua circuit. The peroration, closing with "Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!" was well calculated to bring strong men to their feet. The only complaint the War Eagle might have lodged against the Ship of State (in some imaginable admiralty court having ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... the immediate special applications. Your practical man is given to appealing to such theories now and then; though I confess that he too often leaves the impression of having taken them up on the spur of the moment to round a peroration and to give dignity to a popular cry; and that, in his lips, they are apt to sound so crude and artificial that one can only wonder at his condescending to notice them. He ridicules them as the poorest of platitudes ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... prophesied that the government would lose caste and dignity, and become a traveling caravan if the change were made. Where will the nations of Europe find it when they send their ministers to recognize the Confederate Government?—was the peroration of ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... their heads with a lot of useless nonsense. And then talking about land nationalisation. The two don't go together, sir. If you educate a man he's not going to go and sit down on a bare field and look for worms. . . ." He paused in his peroration as he ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... prisoner was acquitted, but found few takers. Mr. Dulberry said that he would have taken it if the jury had not been packed. Three to four that the trial was over before twelve o'clock;—this was taken cautiously. Ten to seven that Mr. Justice —— did not yawn six times before the peroration of Mr. —— (who led for the crown); this was taken pretty freely. A thousand to one that the prisoner did not show the white feather; in spite of the immense odds, this was not listened to; so generally was the prisoner's character established ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey

... finished! Anastasia, all is finished! No more hope! There is no longer any justice in France! I am atrociously sacrificed!" and by way of peroration, Pipelet threw, with all his strength, the portrait and sign to the end of the alley. Rudolph and Rigolette had, in the obscurity, slightly smiled at Pipelet's despair. After having addressed some words of ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... "Indeed," he said, "their zeal for the interests of the College has for some time past chiefly manifested itself in their efforts and schemes for dislodging me from Burnside and in their proceedings they seem to have adopted the favourite peroration of Cicero which may be freely translated thus, 'and Bethune must be ousted.'" He added: "I can afford to forgive the Board for any hard constructions they put upon my proceedings; they may be necessary for their own justification." ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan

... his, however, was complete without a peroration, and on this evening he surpassed himself. "You," he began, "who buy books without a thought of what you are buying, who are guided in your taste for fiction by the advertisements and buy a novel with as little care as you would buy a pair of scissors, ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... of merit and a proud confidence of immortality. T. is very modest and delicate in the manner of intimating his expectations. But the sentiment of these last words is substantially the same with the line of Horace: Exegi monumentum aere perennius. The whole peroration of this Biography is one of singular beauty and moral elevation. Pathetic, yet calm, rich in noble sentiments and animated by the purest and loftiest spirit, it is a fit topstone to that monument, in respect to which T. felt so ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... sagacity, my brother," the other replied. "His peroration was redolent of the Koran—A ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... forces have been gathered and marshalled the true, sane movement of the work is entered upon and pushed at high tension, and with swift, copious modulations to its foreordained climax and optimistic peroration in the fourth and last out-of-door scene as portrayed in the Spring Song. The locale of this closing number is the beautiful spot in the woods, on the shore of Biloxi Bay:—where ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... lengthy interrogation The Spirit had been pretending to doze, But he waked himself up at the peroration, And most ungallantly turned up his nose, And turned on his heel, and turned him away,— Sulkily ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks

... received with applause; the peroration being delivered with a vast controlled emphasis of eye and voice; and it was followed by the drinking of the cook's health. "The generous virtues," Mr. Helwyse would then go on to say, "arise from the cultivation of the stomach. From man's very earthliness ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... With this remarkable peroration, spoken in a high monotonous key, after the fashion of the political orator, Milton sat down mopping his face, ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... brilliant oration in any way; neither exordium nor peroration, and the middle occasionally a little mixed. But a good sensible straightforward speech, and if DYKE had done no more than show that an important Ministerial measure could be explained within limit of an hour, he would not ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various

... be found in some elaborate specimens of pulpit or forensic eloquence. These six parts were (1) the exordium or introduction, (2) the division of the subject, (3) the statement of what is to be established, (4) the argumentation, (5) the appeal to the feelings, and (6) the peroration ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter

... With this peroration, Mr. Bucket, buttoned up, goes quietly out, looking steadily before him as if he were already piercing the night in quest of ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... be surpassed. No such thoughts ever before had been put into words. She spoke on that day for all the women of the world, for the wives of the present and future generations. The audience sat breathless and, at the close of the following peroration, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... right honorable gentleman has turned round on us, and in a peroration, the elaborate character of which remarkably contrasted with the garrulous confidence of all the doings of his cabinet, the right honorable gentleman told us that he had been assured that a certain power had made him minister, and that a certain power would prevent ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... of laughter); that he was, perhaps, rightly served for not having publicly availed himself of his bishop's dispensation (renewed peals of merriment). By this foolish delicacy (more of that detestable horse-laughter), he had got himself into a false position; and so on, till the ad misericordiam peroration addressed to 'Captain Devereux, dear,' and 'Toole, my honey.' Well, they quizzed him unmercifully; they sat down and eat all that was left of the hare-pie, under his wistful ogle. They made him narrate minutely every ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... With an eloquent peroration, Rev. Father Licking closed by craving the prayers of the faithful for the departed hero of ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... they diffused such happiness throughout the community by preferring, for the exercise of power and the acquisition of honours, the lowliest citizens in point of property, education, and character. Fortunately recollecting the peroration of a speech, on the purifying influences of American democracy and their destined spread over the world, made by a certain eloquent senator (for whose vote in the Senate a Railway Company, to which my two brothers belonged, had just paid 20,000 dollars), I wound up by repeating its glowing ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... 'makes a great deal of that remark. His peroration is a very fine piece of composition. "Whether (concludes he) the captain of a school cricket team who could own spontaneously to having been guilty of so horrible, so terrible an act of favouritismical jobbery, who could sit unmoved and see his team being beaten in the most important match of ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... as a Lenten peroration to these remarks of mine which have strayed so woefully from their jovial text, save that I ought fairly to confess that my last impression of the Carnival was altogether Carnivalesque.. The merry-making of Shrove Tuesday had life and felicity; the dead letter of tradition broke ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... presided, introduced the speaker in his happiest manner. For nearly two hours she held that large audience with intense interest and enthusiasm, and when she finished with a beautiful peroration, the people seemed to take a long breath, as if to find relief from the intensity of their emotions. Loud cries followed for Mr. Beecher; but he arose, and with great feeling and solemnity, said: "Let no man open his ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... earnest of further benefactions.[1207] A sermon of Bishop Horsley once produced an effect which would hardly be possible except under circumstances of great public excitement. When he preached in Westminster Abbey, before the House of Lords, on January 30, 1793, the whole assembly, stirred by his peroration, rose with one impulse, and remained standing ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... for the peroration yet," Ransom said, with savage dryness; and he sat forward, with his elbow on his knees, his eyes on the ground, a flush in his ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... to drop was Miss Quincey, but she would not have missed that illuminating hour, not if you had paid her—three times her salary. It was her one glimpse of the larger life; her one point of contact with the ideal. Her pencil staggered over her note-book as Miss Cursiter flamed and lightened in her peroration. ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair

... terms, answered, that 'he had been to dine with his friend the Duke, that some conversation had passed on the subject, he was afraid it was not the thing, it was not the true sostenuto style; but as I had written the article' (holding my peroration on the Beggar's Opera carelessly in his hand), 'it might pass!' I could perceive that the rogue licked his lips at it, and had already in imagination 'bought golden opinions of all sorts of people' by this very criticism, and I had the satisfaction the next day to meet Miss Stephens ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... interrupted my father, whose habit of commenting aloud in church had often disconcerted Mr. Grylls. "Are you quite sure, Mr. Badcock, that we are not starting with the Doctor's peroration?" ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... fancy costume. The Swiss divine Bullinger, after a lengthy and elaborately learned argument as to the particular day in the week of creation upon which it was most probable that God called the angels into being, says, by way of peroration, "Let us lead a holy and angel-like life in the sight of God's holy angels. Let us watch, lest he that transfigureth and turneth himself into an angel of light under a good show and likeness deceive us."[1] ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... that all oaths of allegiance must be incontinently broken. If it was sin thus to have sworn even in ignorance, it were obstinate sin to continue to respect them after fuller knowledge. Then comes the peroration, in which he cries aloud against the cruelties of that cursed Jezebel of England - that horrible monster Jezebel of England; and after having predicted sudden destruction to her rule and to the rule of all crowned women, and warned all men that if they ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... postilion; 'I treated you to a per—per—peroration some time ago, so that I have contrived to put the cart before the horse, as the Irish orators frequently do in the honourable House, in whose speeches, especially those who have taken lessons in rhetoric, the per—per—what's the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... home a little after twelve, ate his dinner, and fell to work on his manuscript. By half-past three he had finished all but the peroration. Gilbart prided himself on his perorations; and knowing from experience that it helped him to ideas and phrases he caught up his hat and went ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... my story doesn't end here. I am extremely glad to add the usual "lived-happily-ever-after" peroration, for that was really what happened in this case. The father of my young lady informant, who is a doctor, sewed up the young fellow's lip, he was presented at court, and the real daughter who so narrowly escaped marrying may be an old ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... returned the master, observing that the other paused to note the effect of his peroration, and using a familiarity in his address that the acquaintance of the former passage had taught him was not misapplied; "if not, friend Dodge, you have made a capital mistake in getting on board of her, as it is by no means probable an occasion will offer to ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... Really, the general ignorance that prevails among the working classes as to the clearest principles of political economy is something absolutely appalling, absolutely appalling.' And his Grace scribbled a note in his memorandum-book of Hilda's ready-made peroration, for fear he should forget its precise wording before he began to give the House the benefit of his views that night upon the political economy of ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... clever the development may be, it spoils even the most pleasing and interesting subject if there is too much of it. Handel knew when to stop and, when he meant stopping, he stopped much as a horse stops, with little, if any, peroration. Who can doubt that he kept his movements short because he knew that the worst music within a reasonable compass is better than the best which is made tiresome by being spun out unduly? I only know one concerted piece of Handel's which I think too long, I mean the overture to Saul, but I have ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... Hunston. His open countenance, democratic manners, and pungent speech produced a most favorable impression, and it was undeniable that, for the moment at least, he had the house with him when he swung into his peroration. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... Strafford, and with all his boyish armoury of eloquence and scorn fought over again the long-lost battle, hiss and groan falling unheeded into the stream of his young voice. But vain, vain! hard is the Hanoverian heart in boy, as in man, and all your glowing periods were in vain—vain as, your peroration told us, 'was the blood of gallant hearts shed on Culloden's field.' Poor N., you had but one timorous supporter, even me, so early your fidus Achates—but one against so many. Yet were you crestfallen? Galileo with his 'E pur si muove,' Disraeli with his 'The time will come,' wore such ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard

... Yes, and we shall hear also the other side—how, in a florilegium of Latin, selected to honour aright the Graces and the Muses and the majesty of Law, Johannes-Baptista Bottinius can do justice to his client and to his own genius by showing, with due exordium and argument and peroration, that Pompilia is all that her worst adversaries allege, and yet can be established innocent, or not so very guilty, by her rhetorician's learning and legal ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... at Great Marlborough street police-court. I watched the proceedings closely, and my experience in such cases, and my infallible sense of discrimination, enabled me to make a discovery." He paused for breath, and to note the effect of his peroration; he wondered if the words were right. "I am satisfied," he went on, "that the ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... the witnesses for the defence proved conclusively that the prisoner could not, and did not, commit the murder. Finally, Calton wound up his, elaborate and exhaustive speech, which lasted for over two hours, by a brilliant peroration, calling upon the jury to base their verdict upon the plain facts of the case, and if they did so they could hardly fail in bringing in a ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... to this," said I, by way of peroration, "that you're afraid of Edith letting you down, and you ought to be ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... is the peroration of the poem. Nowhere has Shelley expressed his philosophy of man's relation to the universe with more sublimity and with a more imperial command of language than in these stanzas. If it were possible to identify ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... to an end—I am inclined to think that it was a premature one, as the peroration was hurried and disconnected. The thread of the argument had been rudely broken, and the audience was restless and expectant. Waldron sat down, and, after a chirrup from the chairman, Professor Challenger rose and advanced to the edge ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... ou Gouvernement fond sur la Morale, Amsterdam, Rey, 1776, is interesting mainly for its unfortunate dedication and peroration, inscribed to Louis XVI, who was hailed therein as a long ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing

... Thunderous applause greeted this peroration, which had been delivered with an accompaniment of violent gesture and a wealth of obscene epithets, quite beyond the power of the mere chronicler to render. Lenoir had a harsh, strident voice, very high pitched, and he spoke with a broad, provincial accent, somewhat difficult to locate, but ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... throat to begin, and as he happened (as the Count was well aware) to have the greatest enthusiasm for this policy, and to have recently read the thirteen volumes of Professor Bungstrumpher on the subject, he delivered a peroration so remarkable alike for its fervor, its facts, and its phenomenal length, that when, upon a gentle hint from the Count, he at last paused, all traces of objection had vanished from the minds of Darius P. Maddison, senior ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston

... their national beverage, were singing, bragging and swearing at the top of their voices, and after the manner of their kind. At the farther end of the room a big corpulent swashbuckler was holding forth loudly to a circle of admiring cronies; his peroration was an introduction to a toast; that ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell

... lecture he was as punctilious as Portia about the pound of flesh. His utterance was deliberate and spaced with not infrequent slight delays. Exactly at the end of the hour the lecture stopped. Suddenly, abruptly, but quietly, without peroration of any sort, always with "a gentle shock of mild surprise" to the unprepared listener. He had weighed out the full measure to his audience with ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... as to what he knew or suspected, should be severely handled by them his masters, and should be kept in a state of abject moral bondage and slavery until the time when they should see fit to permit him to purchase his freedom at the price of half his possessions. If, said Mr Wegg by way of peroration, he had erred in saying only 'Halves!' he trusted to his comrade, brother, and partner not to hesitate to set him right, and to reprove his weakness. It might be more according to the rights of things, to say Two-thirds; ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... waiting an opportunity to give battle to our king. Thus, as I said, I can safely exhort the good citizens of Berlin to defend themselves heroically against the infamous spoiler. How beautifully this peroration sounds: 'People of Berlin! rather let yourselves be buried under the ruins of your burning city than submit to an incendiary enemy!'—Incendiary," repeated he thoughtfully, "that is rather a strong expression, and if the Russians ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... if the characters in a narrative or in a drama did not use the same rhetorical art as do the characters of actual life. The poets justly carry over rhetoric when the scene demands it, and have often proved themselves excellent rhetoricians. Quintilian praises the peroration of Priam's speech begging Achilles for the body of Hector,[78] and Cicero gives a rhetorical analysis of the speech of the old man in the Andria of Terence, where the arrangement is especially appropriate ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... performed another characteristic peroration. She did not listen, but stood with warning hand up, a small but plucky-looking traffic policeman, till he ceased, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... military tactics, not to speak of social intercourse and sport. And yet his early youth and late age are hidden from us. Like the models of Greek eloquence, which begin with tame obviousness, rise into dignity, fire, pathos, and then close softly, without sounding peroration, so Xenophon comes upon us, an educated young man, looking out for something to do; we lose him in the autumn of his life, when he was driven from the fair retreat which the old man had hoped would be his final resting-place. During seven years of his early ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... in some of his auditors (it should be remarked that the bottles were constantly uncorked during his speech); but this unexpected conclusion calmed even the most turbulent spirits. "That's how a clever barrister makes a good point!" said he, when speaking of his peroration later on. The visitors began to laugh and chatter once again; the committee left their seats, and stretched their legs on the terrace. Keller alone was still disgusted with Lebedeff and his speech; he turned from one to another, saying in a ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... granted; and on the 2nd of June he delivered a long and able discourse, vindicating his administration in India, and entering at large into the principles which had actuated his conduct. He finally appealed to his accusers in the following energetic peroration:—"To the commons of England, in whose name I am arraigned for desolating the provinces of their dominion in India, I dare to reply, that they are, and their representatives annually tell them so, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... utterly incapable of uttering a single word. Her head rested on her brother's shoulder, and she clasped one of his hands tightly between her own. Orso, though secretly somewhat annoyed by her peroration, was too much alarmed to reprove her, even in the mildest fashion. He was silently waiting till the nervous attack from which she seemed to be suffering should have passed, when there was a knock at the door, ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee

... genial antics of my neighbor increased until he broke into delighted mutterings, such as "He's a stud-horse," and "Put the kybosh on 'em," and many more that have escaped my memory. But the Boy Orator's peroration I am glad to remember, for his fervid convictions lifted him into the domain of metaphor and cadence; and though to be sure I made due allowance for enthusiasm, his picture of Arizona remained vivid with me, and I should have voted to make the Territory ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... Henry James) is primarily concerned with that delicate and fascinating speech which burrows deeper and deeper like a mole; but we have wholly forgotten that speech which mounts higher and higher like a wave and falls in a crashing peroration. Perhaps the most thoroughly brilliant and typical man of this decade is Mr Bernard Shaw. In his admirable play of 'Candida' it is clearly a part of the character of the Socialist clergyman that he should be eloquent, but he is not eloquent, because the whole 'G.B.S.' condition ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton

... h'm! The first part only deals with your pictures. Here"s the peroration: 'For work done without conviction, for power wasted on trivialities, for labour expended with levity for the deliberate purpose of winning the easy ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... distance from you; and gladder I shall be when the same room holds both of us. But I cannot open the window and fly.... How much you will have to say to me about the Greeks, unless you begin first to abuse me about the Romans. If you begin that, the peroration will be a very pathetic one, in my being turned out of your ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... {21} a sentence than which nothing can coincide more fully with the older view that use and disuse were the main purveyors of variations, or conflict more fatally with his own subsequent distinctive feature. Moreover, as I showed in my last work on evolution, {22} in the peroration to his "Origin of Species," he discarded his accidental variations altogether, and fell back on the older theory, so that the body of the "Origin of Species" supports one theory, and the peroration another that differs from it toto coelo. ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... wave their hats, and dance in astonishment at their own perseverance and success. So it is with Pope in his peroration to the Dunciad, and in many other of the serious and really eloquent passages of his works. They ARE eloquent, brilliant, in composition faultless; but the intense self-consciousness of their author, and their visible elaboration, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... speaking from head to foot, than to the cool and unexcitable Scot. After two or three such climaxes, with pauses between, after the manner of Dr. Chalmers, the preacher gathers himself up for his peroration which, with the tact of the orator, he has made more striking, more touching, more impressive than any preceding portion of his discourse. He is wound up often to an excitement which is painful to see. The full deep voice, so beautifully expressive, already taxed to its utmost extent, ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... for himself. Shirley came. He arrived at the end of August accompanied both by his own wife and by Warren's. He delivered a patriotic speech, in which he did not stint his praise of what had really been a great and notable achievement. His peroration called forth some genuine enthusiasm. It began with a promise to raise the pay of the Massachusetts contingent by fifteen shillings a month, and ended with free rum all round and three cheers for the king. The prospect thereupon brightened a little. The mutineers kept quiet for several ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood

... await the end of Diggle's peroration. It was then too late to repine. The vessel was already rounding the Foreland, and though he was more than half convinced that he had been decoyed on board on false pretenses, he could not divine any motive on Diggle's part, and hoped that his voyage would be not much less ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... Timothy finished a long speech with a flowery peroration, in which he declared that if Parliament were desirous of keeping the realms of Her Majesty free from the invasions of foreigners it must be done by maintaining the dignity of the Judicial bench. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... hear the official defence to its end. Then he hurried upstairs in search of Letty, who, with Miss Tulloch, was in the Speaker's private gallery. As he went he thought of Fontenoy's speech, its halting opening, the savage force of its peroration. His pulses tingled: "Magnificent!" he said to himself; "magnificent! We have ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... read my address in its entirety will find it in "The Three Trials for Blasphemy." For those, however, who are not so curious or so painstaking, I give here the peroration only, to show what sentiments I appealed to in the breasts of the jury, and how far my defence was from boastfulness ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... bars of hell for the unrepentant, and flung Rome into the abyss. This effective performance, inartistic and almost grotesque, never fell to the level of the ridiculous, for native power was strong in the man. The peroration raised Livingstone to the skies, chained Sullivan in the lowest depths of the Inferno, and introduced as a terrible example a brand ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... said No!—he was not to round off his long night's rest with a neat peroration. He was interrupted in the middle of it by what seemed, in his dream-world, just reached, the loud crack of a bone that disintegrated under pressure; but that when he woke was clearly a stone flung at his window. What a capital instance of dream-celerity, thought he! Fancy ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... of several dull, disorderly characters in and about St. James, to be performed by Certain Persons, for Example: and the part of Pasquin Drawcansir, to be performed by his Censorial Highness, for his Interest.[6] The Satire to be introduced by an Oration and to conclude by a Peroration. Both to be spoken from the Rostrum in the manner of certain ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin

... Washington's Birthday, and it is even more inflated than the first specimen. Combined with the rhetoric, however, there is a mass of sober argument that again suggests the later Lincoln. The arguments, too, are characterized by a sound common sense that is no less characteristic of the speaker. The peroration deserves quotation as being one of the finest and at the same time one of the least familiar passages in Lincoln's writings: "This is the one hundredth and tenth anniversary of the birthday of Washington. We are met to celebrate this day. Washington is the mightiest ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln

... you, to seek for ammunition in this formidable arsenal, and that your vigorous metaphysics falls not into the hands of some sophist of the market-place, who might discuss the question in the presence of a starving audience: we should have pillage for conclusion and peroration. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... prior to the Civil War, schoolboys had been declaiming the peroration of his greatest speech, his ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... threshold, slain by the murderous Syrians?" continued Jasher, with yet fiercer action; "who but Abishai, the brave, the faithful, he who had denounced the viper, and had sought, but in vain, to crush it—it was he who fell at last a victim to its treacherous sting!" Jasher ended his peroration with a hissing sound from between his clinched teeth, and the caldron of human feelings around him began, as it were, to seethe and boil. Fanaticism stops not to weigh evidence, or to listen to reason. Joab could hardly ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker

... this emphatic utterance, he proceeded with his address, which was a dull affair and did not inspire the least enthusiasm. It was, indeed, a somewhat somnolent discourse, and his audience hardly seemed to wake up till he reached his peroration, which closed with a ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton

... torpid with the lazy enjoyment of sixty years' security, and the still unanimating repose of public prosperity. The preacher found them all in the French Revolution. This inspires a juvenile warmth through his whole frame. His enthusiasm kindles as he advances; and when he arrives at his peroration, it is in a full blaze. Then viewing, from the Pisgah of his pulpit, the free, moral, happy, flourishing, and glorious state of France, as in a bird-eye landscape of a promised land, he breaks out into the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the glorious hills and valleys bordering the Bay, which have inspired more than one Welsh literary itinerant to rhapsody, and furnished Mr. Lloyd George with many a homely and figurative peroration, have proved no mean asset to the proprietors of a railway, whose traffic consists so largely of tourists. To the shareholders of the Cambrian has come the satisfaction of knowing that a concern, which was born under, and for many years continued to struggle for ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine

... address told of Our Motherless Government. Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker (Conn.) gave for the first time her masterly speech, The Constitutional Rights of the Women of the United States, which has been so widely circulated in pamphlet form, and which closed with this peroration: ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... pretension, and invariably took occasion to condemn any such exhibition on the part of others a dozen years her junior. Not meeting any remonstrance she made quite a speech on the familiarity of young ladies, their want of dignity, and ended in a grand peroration upon the conceit of the young men, their vicious habits and all short-comings she could bring to ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... days thought that the law of marriage had been drawn up less in the interest of husbands than of children? I also wish it very much. Would you rather desire that this book should serve as proof to the peroration of the Capuchin, who preached before Anne of Austria, and when he saw the queen and her ladies overwhelmed by his triumphant arguments against their frailty, said as he came down from the pulpit of truth, "Now you are all honorable women, and ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac



Words linked to "Peroration" :   rhetoric, perorate, oration, close, end, ending



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