Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Declaim   Listen
verb
Declaim  v. t.  
1.
To utter in public; to deliver in a rhetorical or set manner.
2.
To defend by declamation; to advocate loudly. (Obs.) "Declaims his cause."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Declaim" Quotes from Famous Books



... Maurice was inclined to declaim in that vigorous vocabulary which is taboo. He had been tricked. He was no longer needed at the Red Chateau. Four millions in a gun barrel; hoax was written all over the face of it, and yet he had been as unsuspicious as ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... be remarked that the very persons who called him a mischievous maniac, for condemning in burning words the Rohilla war and the spoliation of the Begums, exalted him into a prophet as soon as he began to declaim, with greater vehemence, and not with greater reason, against the taking of the Bastile and the insults offered to Marie Antoinette. To us he appears to have been neither a maniac in the former case nor a prophet in the latter, but in both cases a great and good man, led into extravagance by ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... announces her intention to ignore existing laws and "hack a way through at all costs," should surely be the last to declaim on the alleged offences against the laws of war by a small, weak, unprepared neighbour. If these considerations are insufficient, there remains the fact that Germany herself began war ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... infallible test to distinguish between those who are "quickened" by the Spirit of God, and those who "have a name to live and are dead." It is a very awful statement, but, it is to be feared, strictly correct, that ministers may declaim against sin in the pulpit, who yet indulge it in the parlour. There may be much head knowledge, where ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... these, what useful purpose can it serve to declaim about conspiracies, reservations, and the like, when they so conspicuously testify to the fact, that one of the most energetic agents—after his own peculiar way—in bringing about a change of dynasty in France, was ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... glibly of the fearless pursuit of truth may here see a real example of a life given to it—an example all the more solemn and impressive if they think that the pursuit was in vain. It is easy to declaim about it, and to be eloquent about lies and sophistries; but it is shallow to forget that truth has its difficulties. To hear some people talk, it might be thought that truth was a thing to be made out and expressed at will, under any circumstances, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... individualistic expression, no affected surprise in personal perversity of image or metaphor will make a real poet, or real poetry. There must be first and last of all, a sure ardour, the poet's very own, which will of itself support obvious, or even slightly detectable, influences. It is not enough to declaim oneself, or propose continually one's group. The single utterance is what is necessary, a real freshness of vocalization which is, so to speak, the singer's own throat. If he be original in his freshness, we shall be able to single him away from the sweeping movements of the hour by his ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... of tyranny. If the word of God is relative, and relates itself with slaves, it incontestably follows that all human beings are slaves, and Deity is by such reasoners degraded into the character of universal slave-driver. Really theologians and others who declaim so bitterly against 'blasphemers,' and take such very stringent measures to punish 'infidels,' who speak or write of their God, should seriously consider whether the worst, that is, the least religious of infidel writers, ever ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... building of St. Peter's at Rome they would be exempt from all penalty for sins, paying little heed to the other conditions, such as sorrow for sin, and purpose of amendment. Hence, many were led to declaim against the procedure of the zealous friar. These protests were the near mutterings of a storm that had long been gathering, and that was soon to shake all Europe from the Baltic ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... abstract *Ad to adduce, adjacent, affect, accede *Ante before antediluvian, anteroom *Bi two biped, bicycle *Circum around circumambient, circumference *Cum, com, with, together combine, consort, coadjutor con, co *Contra against contradict, contrast *De from, negative deplete, decry, demerit, declaim down, intensive *Di, dis asunder, away from, divert, disbelief negative *E, ex from, out of evict, excavate *Extra beyond extraordinary, extravagant *In in, into, not innate, instil, insignificant *Inter among, between intercollegiate, interchange ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... say how pleasant was the writing out of my discourse, and how the pleasure was heightened by the slightest thrill of alarm at my own temerity. My lecture I copied out in my most careful hand, and, as I had it by heart, I used to declaim passages of it ensconced in my moss-house, or concealed behind my shrubbery trees. In these places I tried it all over, sentence by sentence. The evening came at last which had been looked forward to for a couple of months or more. The small schoolroom was filled by forms ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... peasants, but who, meanwhile perform incomprehensible manoeuvres. Still the dream. One has to be a madman to put on these things. And the frenzy of the actors, pale and worn out, who drag themselves to their place yawning, and suddenly start like crazy people to declaim their tirade; continually the assembling of ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... mouth in the lee of a gunshield and croon in harmony as the dusk settles down on a day's work done. Other ships' companies are more ambitious; the canteen provides a property-box, and from a flag-decked stage the chosen performers declaim and clog-dance with all the circumstance ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... of a sublime cast, especially Milton. I can hear him even now repeat passages from the Comus, which was a special favourite. Elsewhere I have told how when he was young and stood at the composing desk in his printing office, he used to declaim Byron by heart. That a Puritan printer, one of the last men in the world to be carried away by a fashion, should be vanquished by Byron, is as genuine a testimony as any I know to the reality of ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford

... than diminished when she found that her intended prey had escaped her, she began to declaim at the top of her voice, and to shriek hysterically; and the policeman, regarding it as a simple case of "drunk and disorderly," took her off to the station, ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... this time that Cicero was especially courted by the heads of the dictator's party, of whom Hirtius and Dolabella went so far as to declaim daily at his house for the benefit of his instructions.[220] A visit of this nature to the Tusculan villa, soon after the publication of the De Finibus, gave rise to his work entitled Tusculanae Quaestiones, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... that no one knew whither to send. He could hardly credit this, and his wrath increased at the stupidity of the servants; it seemed to relieve him to declaim against them. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... style may be gathered from the letter which follows:(1) 'I heard Polemo declaim the other day, to say something of things sublunary. If you ask what I thought of him, listen. He seems to me an industrious farmer, endowed with the greatest skill, who has cultivated a large estate for corn and vines only, and indeed with a rich return ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius

... one of the group of conservatives who met in Pierre Rougon's yellow room to declaim against the Republic. La ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... Germans. The Bavarians, again, must have in them a good deal of the persistent Celtic element which they inherited from the Boievari who at one time left Bohemia for Bavaria. The amusing thing is that those who most loudly declaim on the subject of Deutschland ueber Alles are the most thoroughly mixed of the lot. It is idle to speculate on what would have become of German imperial conceits if the German race and its admixtures, like that of our islands, had ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... a pun was made he must perforce outstrip it, he fell into Franko's humour from time to time, but albeit aware that what he uttered was good, and by comparison transcendent, he refused to enjoy it. Nor when Franko started from his arm to declaim a passage, did he do other than make limp efforts to unite himself to Franko again. A further sign of immense depression in him was that instead of the creative, it was the critical faculty he exercised, and rather ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... more amenable to fashion than is an art with which the public is but vicariously concerned. Those standards to which artists have gradually accustomed it the public will not see lightly set at naught. Very rigid, for example, are the traditions of the theatre. If my brother were to declaim his lines at the Haymarket in the florotund manner of Macready, what a row there would be in the gallery! It is only by the impalpable process of evolution that change comes to the theatre. Likewise in the sphere of ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... the Corn Bill the root of all evil, and others who trace all the miseries of life to the practice of muffling up children in night-clothes when they sleep or travel. They will declaim by the hour together on the first, and argue themselves black in the face on the last. It is in vain that you give up the point. They persist in the debate, and begin again—'But don't you see—?' These sort of partial obliquities, as they are more entertaining and original, are also ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... the child pray to God, and implores him not to stir. Reversing the action of all actors whom we usually see, the artist recited the fragment in a wholly concentric fashion; he did not declaim; he made no gesture toward the audience; but what emotion in his voice, and how his gaze hovered over and around the dear creature who was perhaps to be forever lost to him! He called the child to him, he pressed him to his heart; he laid his hands ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... domestic government which sways public opinion, and uses the national passions as the instruments of its will. It would be utterly impossible, if there were no exasperating distinctions amongst us, to create any artificial causes of discontent. Let men declaim for a century, and if they have no real grievance their harangues will be empty sound and idle air. But when what they tell the people is true—when they are sustained by substantial facts, effects are produced ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... of the manger stand near And love thee! An infant He came To His own who rejected Him here, But the Magi brought gifts all the same. I hurry the cross on my Dear! My gifts are the griefs I declaim! Sleep. ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... shocked if you explained to them the meaning of the sentiment to which they had been giving utterance. There are operatic scenas, dealing with abduction and all sorts of uncomfortable situations, and again youngsters declaim of their somewhat indecorous emotions with gusto and—let us hope—a sublime insensibility of all that they imply. They are warbling words to music, but they are not singing, for the meaning is not there. The fault, of course, lies in the traditional idea that ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt

... moreover, is not promoted, in any direction, by abusing those of more liberal views on this question. The man who conscientiously believes them wrong, and boldly says so, and does not simply declaim against them but opposes them by fair argument drawn from scripture, is to be honored. I would there were more such. But it will not in the least tend to conciliate favor for the more stringent aspect of the ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.

... I should have been chosen "stage director" of our "troupe," I cannot say, but something in my ability to declaim Regulus probably led to this high responsibility. At any rate, I not only played the leading juvenile, I settled points of action and costume without the slightest hesitation. Cora was my ingenue opposite, it fell out, and ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... on looking at these flowers. I would I had known you in happier days, when I should have been able to enjoy your genius and admire your art. You must be a great actor, for you have a wonderfully sonorous and pliable voice. I should like to hear you declaim, even though you should ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... same habit and power of excitement that is described in the spinning dervishes of the East. Like them, she would spin until all around her were giddy, while her own brain, instead of being disturbed, was excited to great action. Pausing, she would declaim verse of others or her own; act many parts, with strange catch-words and burdens that seemed to act with mystical power on her own fancy, sometimes stimulating her to convulse the hearer with laughter, sometimes to ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... storm of newly patented virtue they declaim against the "big" ones. They fail to admit that they merely want to usurp instead of to magnify Government. The political machine of the country is regarded as a part of the machine by which special interests prosper. In its efforts to repudiate ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... attached to it: he quitted her abruptly, with all the fine advice he had prepared for her, and was almost tempted to carry it to Lady Castlemaine, and to unite himself with her interests; or immediately to quit the court party, and declaim freely in parliament against the grievances of the state, and particularly to propose an act to forbid the keeping of mistresses; but his prudence conquered his resentments; and thinking only how to enjoy with pleasure ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... half-past three until five Miss Helen Craven gave the children, whose parents desired it, a dancing lesson. If Nora couldn't sew, she could dance like a fairy. Her education was a curious conglomeration. She could read and declaim, but spelling was quite beyond her, and her attempts at it made a titter through the room. She could talk a little French, and she had crossed the ocean to England with her papa. So she wasn't to be ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... natural grotto under the rocks, which gives them the appearance of a rustic bridge. Into this grotto the sun's rays never penetrate. I am confident that it much resembles the place where Cicero sometimes went to declaim. It invites to study. Hither I retreat during noontide hours; my mornings are engaged upon the hills, or in the garden sacred to Apollo. Here I would most willingly spend my days, were I not too near Avignon, and too far from Italy. For why should ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... was now demanded ability to discuss all sorts of social, political, economic, and scientific or metaphysical questions; to argue in public in the marketplace or in the law courts; to declaim in a formal manner on almost any topic; to amuse or even instruct the populace upon topics of interest or questions of the day; to take part in the many diplomatic embassies and political missions of the times—the ability, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... debated is whether the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, seeing themselves deserted by the army, shall remain or flee. The different rhetors declaim as ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... objection might be applied to HOMER and SHAKSPEARE. The former has the advantage of being written in Greek, so that very few people can read it. SHAKSPEARE has a popularity that is partly accounted for by the low taste of the people who have gone to the theatre to hear SIDDONS rave and GARRICK declaim, or who will persist in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various

... girl would run off with her hands to her head. He pursued her, dashing in and out and round the house and amongst the sheds, would drive her into some corner, where she would fall on her knees stopping her ears, and then he would stand at a distance and declaim filthy denunciations at her back for half an hour at a stretch. "Your mother was a devil, a deceitful devil—and you too are a devil," he would shriek in a final outburst, pick up a bit of dry earth or a handful of mud (there was plenty of ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... as he thought, shut Raleigh's mouth with regard to this one great difficulty, he continued to declaim against 'those traitors,' obstinately persisting in mixing up Raleigh's 'Main' with the 'Bye,' in spite of the distinction which he himself had drawn. Raleigh appealed against this once or twice, and at ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... by curiosity. "His auditory were willing to silence him by pulling, haling, and pinching him, yet would he pertinaciously persist to the end, and sleep still." The King was introduced into Haydock's bedroom, heard him declaim, and next day cross-examined him in private. Awed by the royal acuteness, Haydock confessed that he was a humbug, and that he had taken to preaching all night by way of getting a little notoriety, and because he felt himself to be "a buried man ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang

... on whom dost thou trust, that thou rebellest against me? Behold, thou trustest upon the staff of this bruised reed, even upon Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand and pierce it: so is Pharaoh, King of Egypt, to all that trust on him." Then, as he continued to declaim in a loud voice, so that the crowds gathered on the wall could hear him, the delegates besought him to speak in Aramaic, which they understood, but "speak not to us in the Jews' language, in the ears of the people that are on the wall!" Instead, however, of granting their request, the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... no doubt intend to hold out other prospects to her, I shall lose no time in placing my case before her. [They stare at him; and he begins to declaim gracefully] He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch, To gain or lose ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... impossible not to connect the arguments and proceedings of a party with that of its leader,—especially when not disavowed or controlled by him. Mr. Fox's partisans declaim against all the powers of Europe, except the Jacobins, just as he does; but not having the same reasons for management and caution which he has, they speak out. He satisfies himself merely with making his invectives, and leaves others to draw the conclusion. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... they do so, I'le teach her to declaim against my pities, why is she not gone out o'th' town, but gives occasion for men to run ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont

... partially owing to the circumstance that I had solaced the many lonely hours of my bachelorhood in acquiring by memory and rehearsing many scraps of poetry. Mr. Bell's favorite method of passing the evening was in teaching his children to read and declaim poetry with dramatic expression, and in this delightful occupation I was an acceptable assistant. Many were the domestic dramas which we produced,—pieces of our own invention,—in addition to our readings ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... vouches God's authority for what he said concerning their manners and elaborate ornamentation, lest they should be offended with his criticisms. If the Prophets could visit our stores and see all the fashions there are to tempt the daughters of to-day, they would declaim against our frivolities on the very doorsteps, and in view of the Easter bonnets, at the entrance to our churches. The badges which our young women wear as members of societies, pinned in rows on broad ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... misfortunes now existing, or that were soon to exist, that he left me half melancholy. Had I known him before I engaged in this business, probably I never should have done it. This person continued to live in this decaying place, and to declaim in the same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house there, because all was going to destruction; and at last I had the pleasure of seeing him give him five times as much for one, as he might have bought it for ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... one which you have charged on all. Reason determines, and it must be done; 'Mongst men, or past, or present, name me one. Hogarth,—I take thee, Candour, at thy word, Accept thy proffer'd terms, and will be heard; 310 Thee have I heard with virulence declaim, Nothing retain'd of Candour but the name; By thee have I been charged in angry strains With that mean falsehood which my soul disdains— Hogarth, stand forth;—Nay, hang not thus aloof— Now, Candour, now ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... complete usurpation of all their former rights by this new parent whom their boys are bound to serve,—this anything but Alma Mater,—the war school of the nation. As for Miss Nan, though she made it a point to declaim vigorously at the fates that prevented her seeing more of her brother, it was wonderful how well she looked and in what blithe spirits she spent her days. Regularly as the sun came around, before guard-mount in the morning and right after supper in the evening, she ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... earnestly declaim in her song against princes, Luke 1, 51-53: "He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their heart. He hath put down princes from their thrones, and hath exalted them of low degree. The hungry he hath ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... of friends, to keep his reading upon this high level. Lycidas was always a special favourite of Tennyson's, and appreciation of it seemed to him a sure 'touchstone of poetic taste'. In conversation he did not tend to declaim or monopolize the talk. He was noted rather for short sayings and for criticisms tersely expressed. He had his moods, contemplative, genial or gay; but all his utterances were marked by independence of thought, and his silence could be richer than the speech of other men. But for display he had ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... forms part of the Rinvyle estate, one of the encumbered properties alluded to in my last letter. The hill-folk, who appear, on the best evidence procurable, to have had hard measure dealt to them by the Mr. Graham who bought part of the old Lynch property, declaim against the "new man," as others ascribe every evil to the middleman; but others again hold that the old proprietors, who remain on the land, fighting against encumbrances, are the "hardest of all," and that the whips of cupidity cannot compare with the scorpions of poverty. Be this ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... founding a church. It was the last city in the world to receive his doctrines,—that city of grammarians, of pedants, of gymnasts, of fencing masters, of play-goers, and babblers about words. "As well might a humanitarian socialist declaim against English prejudices to the proud and exclusive ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord

... began without much spirit; but soon the martial ring of the lines fired him, and before he knew it, he was on his legs thundering away in grand style, while Polly listened with kindling face and absorbed attention. Tom did declaim well, for he quite forgot himself, and delivered the stirring ballad with an energy that made Polly flush and tingle with admiration and delight, and quite electrified a second listener, who had heard all that went on, and ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott

... assume a frowning aspect, and behold only attempts on life, importunate beggary, useless priests and monks, and reserve my praises for those happy nations where there are no crimes, no inequality of fortune, no misery. Impassioned men declaim, exaggerate, lie. For my part, I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist. It is impossible to speak with certainty of the moral of a country if we speak of it too soon. I know that here at Rome I find amiability, science and good sense. It seems to me that everything is much the same ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... the soft air, and the summer where ocean breezes quicken the pulse of life. It unlocks for us the treasury of the world, opens to our gaze whatever is sublime or beautiful; introduces us to the master-minds who live in their works; it leads us where orators declaim, and singers thrill the soul with ecstasy. Nay, more, with it we build churches, endow schools, and provide hospitals and asylums for the weak and helpless. It is, indeed, like a god of this nether world, holding dominion over many spheres of life and receiving the heart-worship ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... carried so far that a teacher is judged from the way he has or has not of getting at the children under him as individuals. All this is a move in the right direction; and yet the subject is still so vague that many of the very critics who declaim against the similar treatment which diverse pupils get at school have no clear idea of what is needed; they merely make demands that the treatment shall suit the child. How each child is to be suited, and the ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... of their tuition fees—consequently cannot afford a faculty of first-class professors.... Not a school in the country gives to the girl equal privileges with the boy.... No school requires and but very few allow the girls to declaim and discuss side by side with the boys. Thus they are robbed of half of education. The grand thing that is needed is to give the sexes like motives for acquirement. Very rarely a person studies closely, without hope of making that knowledge ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... turn to declaim before the school, he had not the courage to do it. Long afterwards, when he had become the greatest orator of modern times, he told how hard this thing had ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin

... the Quakers consider themselves as a highly professing people; that they declaim against the follies and vanities of the world; and that they bear their testimony against civil customs and institutions, even to personal suffering. Hence, professing more than others, more is expected from them. George Fox endeavoured to inculcate this idea into ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... misery of life for multitudes would, as Rossetti puts it, "make a goblin of the sun." You used to be very eloquent against good men who lived only for their own pleasure; are not you yourself living in the same way? I have heard you declaim against the gross selfishness of Goethe's aim in life—"to build the pyramid of his own intellectual culture"; are not you, in your own way, pursuing the same ideal? I have heard you say that nothing so belittled ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... would gladly retaliate the example of persecution, a clamour is raised of the increase of popery: and they are always loud to declaim against the toleration of priests and jesuits, who pervert so many of his majesty's subjects from their religion and allegiance. On the present occasion, the fall of one or more of her sons directed this clamour against the university: and it was confidently ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... it, and Kingdoms to those he has appointed to govern them? These high flown Whims of yours, are just as practicable, as Archimedes his moving the Earth out of its Place, and it provokes me to hear such impossible Projects declaim'd on by such a Visionary, such a Stockjobber ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous

... have no idea the harm that you are doing your country." He loved him all the same, for nothing is stronger than the ties of childhood taken up again at a riper age. Joseph Mouradour bantered the wife and the husband, calling them "my amiable snails," and sometimes he would solemnly declaim against people who were behind the times, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... delightful than a Pantomime—that is, a good Pantomime, such as is usually produced at Covent Garden. We know there are a set of solemn pompous mortals about town, who express much dignified horror at the absurdities of these things, and declaim very fluently, in good set terms, upon the necessity of their abolition. Such fellows as these are ever your dullest of blockheads. Conscious of their lack of ideas, they think to earn the reputation of men of sterling sense, by inveighing continually against what they deem to be frivolity; ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... talk much of poesy and know nothing about it, declaim against the habits of life in the provinces. But put your forehead in your left hand, rest one foot on the fender, and your elbow on your knee; then, if you compass the idea of this quiet and uniform scene, this house and its interior, this company and its interests, heightened ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac

... trembling—for it is a delicate, dangerous avowal—that, as a rule, I do not sympathize with the ladies who declaim on the subject of Woman's Rights. I do not mean to say I lack sympathy with the subject—I should like everybody to have their rights, and especially women—but they are sometimes asserted in such a ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... was in vain to attempt arguing with her aunts. She therefore allowed them to wonder and declaim over their sucking pots, colic powders, and other instruments of torture, while she sent to the wife of one of her tenants who had lately lain-in, and who wished for the situation of nurse, appointing her to be at Lochmarlie the following ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... who only overcame a lisp by orating to the sea with his mouth full of pebbles; and every one knew that Webster was educated only because he was too weak to work. Oratory was in the air; elocution was rampant; and to declaim in orotund, and gesticulate in curves, was regarded as the chief end of man. One-tenth of the time in all public schools was given over to speaking, and on Saturday evenings the schoolhouse was sacred to the ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... horses plunged forward, with the jolting hurdles spattering mud behind them; and the dismal pageant began to move forward through the crowd on that way of sorrows. There was a ceaseless roar and babble of voices as they went. Charke, in his minister's dress, able now to declaim without fear of reply, was hardly silent for a moment from mocking and rebuking the prisoners, and making pompous speeches ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... "foolishness" of the cross, it took possession of the masses. And in our own day, those who wish to get rid of the supernatural, to enlighten religion, to economize faith, find themselves deserted, like poets who should declaim against poetry, or women who should decry love. Faith consists in the acceptance of the incomprehensible, and even in the pursuit of the impossible, and is self-intoxicated with its own sacrifices, its own ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... tongue. break silence; open one's lips, open one's mouth; lift one's voice, raise one's voice; give the tongue, wag the tongue; talk, outspeak^; put in a word or two, hold forth; make a speech, deliver a speech &c n.; speechify, harangue, declaim, stump, flourish, recite, lecture, sermonize, discourse, be on one's legs; have one's say, say one's say; spout, rant, rave, vent one's fury, vent one's rage; expatiate &c (speak at length) 573; speak one's mind, go on the stump, take the stump ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... that it is utterly beside the mark to declaim against these conclusions on the ground of their asserted tendency to deprive mankind of the consolations of the Christian faith, and to destroy the foundations of morality; still less to brand them with the question-begging vituperative appellation of "infidelity." The point is not whether ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... while the passion is upon him, is for a time at least addicted to groves and meadows and purling streams. During this short period of my existence, I contracted just familiarity enough with rural objects to understand tolerably well ever after the poets, when they declaim in such passionate terms in favor of ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... rags', and so out-herod Herod. He is of old standing, a veteran of the Church Epiphany plays, and has already learnt 'to split the ears of the groundlings' with the stentorian sound of his pompous rhetoric. Hear him declaim: ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... "The fools who declaim against me pretend to explain the absurd; and, in order to destroy them entirely, I have composed little poems so comical that they are known by heart in the mills, the taverns, ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... sent back all his prisoners to Truxillo, Lima, or such other places as they thought proper, having in the first place put to death such of their chiefs as he considered most strongly attached to the viceroy. As these soldiers were dispersed over several parts of the country, they began to declaim in favour of the viceroy and against the tyrannical conduct of Gonzalo, and found many persons abundantly disposed to listen to their harangues; both because what they alleged was true in itself, and because most of the Spanish inhabitants ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... epithets. From that time forward he became less guarded—or, rather, it seemed as though he were gradually losing power to control himself. He would grow excited without apparent cause, and begin to declaim as to what he would do when he had found the gold; how he would pay the world back all it had caused him to suffer—how he would become ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... affect him. He was much given to sneering at what he could not understand; and therefore, a great deal met with his disapproval. His reading had evidently brought him down only to about the middle sixties; and affairs at that date were to him still burning questions. Thus he would declaim ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... proofs of devotion which would have touched any hearts not protected by an impenetrable padding of beer and sour crout. But it was, unfortunately for the young king, the fashion at the new court to despise and distrust the Greeks, to underrate their exploits, and to declaim against their honesty. The revolution was treated as a war of words, the defence of Missolonghi as a trifle, and the naval warfare as a farce. The Greeks have since, on the mountains of Maina, and on the plain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... was acted exactly as I had seen it before; but to me it was a novelty to hear Punch, and all the other interlocutors in the piece, discourse in the language in which Dante had sung, and in which I had heard, just before leaving Scotland, Gavazzi declaim. In all lands Punch is an astute scoundrel; but, strange to say, in all lands the popular feeling is on his side. His imperturbable coolness and truculent villany procured him plaudits among the Milanese, as I had seen them do elsewhere. Courage and self-possession are valuable ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... particularly eloquent against avarice in great and noble persons. He was originally a scrivener, and afterwards became, not only a director, but the most active manager of the South-Sea company. Whether it was during his career in this capacity that he first began to declaim against the avarice of the great, we are not informed. He certainly must have seen enough of it to justify his severest anathema; but if the preacher had himself been free from the vice he condemned, his declamations would have had a better effect. He was brought up in custody to the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... is known, the more dangerous to England it is seen to have been, especially in the years 1884-86. In fact, those persons who declaim against German colonial ambitions of to-day may be asked to remember that the extra-European questions recently at issue between Great Britain and Germany are trivial when compared with the momentous problems that were peacefully solved by the agreement of the ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... not many boys in our time who have not declaimed parts of Webster's great speeches; and it will interest them to know that the boy who afterwards made those speeches could never declaim at all while he was at school. He learned his pieces well, and practised them in his own room, but he could not speak them before ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston

... him that having heard him so often declaim against vanity, and detect it so often in his friends, I began to suspect he knew the malady by having had it himself, and that I had observed through life, that those persons who had the most vanity were the most severe ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various

... his the slender purse of money which she had saved to release him from the drudgery of an occupation he loathed, and to enable him to become a great lawyer in Paris. How well he remembered her delight in listening to him declaim the speeches of Thiers and Guizot from the pages of the National, which she had taught him to read when but a mere baby, and from which he imbibed his first lessons in republicanism,—lessons that ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden

... said Mrs. Tallboys, who had evidently been waiting impatiently again to declaim, "that men, even ministers of religion, from Paul if you like downwards, have been willing enough to exalt woman so long as they claim to sit above her. The higher the oppressed, so much higher the self-exaltation of the oppressor. Paul and Peter exalt their virtuous woman, but ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... (the cap she had joyfully worked for herself) she went to her cruel death, still repeating the words, "I am innocent." The funeral, at St. George the Martyr, was attended by 10,000 people. Curran used to declaim eloquently on her unhappy fate, and Mr. Charles Phillips wrote a glowing rhapsody on this victim of legal dulness. But such mistakes not even Justice herself can correct. A city mourned over her early grave; but the life was taken, and there was no redress. Gadsden, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... one another of superstition and impiety. Christians look with abhorrence upon the Pagan, Chinese, and Mahometan superstition. Roman Catholics treat, as impious, Protestant Christians; and the latter incessantly declaim against the superstition of the Catholics. They are all right. To be impious, is to have opinions offensive to the God adored; to be superstitious, is to have of him false ideas. In accusing one another of superstition, the different religionists resemble humpbacks, ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach

... in the works published against witches, to amuse themselves with giving the history of all these mad-headed people boast of, of the circumstances in which they have taken a part, and the way in which they happened. It is in vain then to declaim against them, for you may be assured that people are not wanting who suffer themselves to be dazzled by these pretended miracles, who become smitten with these effects, so extraordinary and so wonderful, and try by every means ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... behind us the gibbet and the stake. No further need of the Voltaires, the Rousseaus and the Diderots to declaim against kingcraft and priestcraft. We have done something more than mark time. We report progress. Yet despite the miracles of modern invention how far in the arts of government has the world traveled from darkness to light since the old tribal days, and what has it learned except to enlarge ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... reasons? To us it does not seem easy to exhibit them. It is easy to declaim about the inferiority of the race, the impossibility of their ever living on an equality with the white race, their lack of ability to support themselves, and the like, but in the end it is very difficult to perceive the logicals consecutiveness of the argument. The inferiority ...
— The Future of the Colored Race in America • William Aikman

... express'd: "You, Drances, never want a stream of words, Then, when the public need requires our swords. First in the council hall to steer the state, And ever foremost in a tongue-debate, While our strong walls secure us from the foe, Ere yet with blood our ditches overflow: But let the potent orator declaim, And with the brand of coward blot my name; Free leave is giv'n him, when his fatal hand Has cover'd with more corps the sanguine strand, And high as mine his tow'ring trophies stand. If any doubt remains, who ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... he to declare that the very perils which threatened her had made a man of him, with all of a man's yearning to share these perils and shield her from them? How was he to speak at all of those perils? He did not declaim, yet when he spoke, an enduring sincerity which she could not deny was in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the party. I rode most of the way, some forty miles, at Mr. Soga's side. He beguiled the time by reciting Wordsworth's poetry, which at that time I had never heard of. As each fresh aspect of the magnificent scenery unfolded itself he would pause and declaim some appropriate ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... formalities of strangers. There is a story that when Burke left the House on the night of the quarrel it was raining, and Mr. Curwen, a member of the Opposition, took him home in his carriage. Burke at once began to declaim against the French. Curwen dropped some remark on the other side. "What!" Burke cried out, grasping the check-string, "are you one of these people! Set me down!" It needed all Curwen's force to keep him where he was; and when they ...
— Burke • John Morley

... "declaim," {phtheggontai}, properly of the "recitative" of the chorus. Cf. Plat. "Phaedr." ...
— The Economist • Xenophon

... because they are of African descent, and are not numerically strong enough to contend with the powers in governmental control. But that is no virtue that calls for admiration. As long as they keep silent and fail to lift up their voices in protestation and declaim against it, their very silence is a world-wide acquiescence. It is practically saying, well done. There are millions of people in the country who could not stand to kill a brute, such is their nervous sensitiveness, ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... dress. No word for a charade would occur to her either waking or dreaming that suited her purpose of getting a statuesque pose in this favorite costume. To choose a motive from Racine was of no use, since Rex and the others could not declaim French verse, and improvised speeches would turn the scene into burlesque. Besides, Mr. Gascoigne prohibited the acting of scenes from plays: he usually protested against the notion that an amusement which was fitting for every one else was unfitting ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... While you, great Lollius, declaim at Rome, I at Praeneste have perused over again the writer of the Trojan war; who teaches more clearly, and better than Chrysippus and Crantor, what is honorable, what shameful, what profitable, what ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... never fail to dwell on maternity as a disqualification for the possession of many civil and political rights. Suggest the idea of women having a voice in making laws and administering the Government in the halls of legislation, in Congress, or the British Parliament, and men will declaim at once on the disabilities of maternity in a sneering contemptuous way, as if the office of motherhood was undignified and did not comport with the highest public offices in church and state. It is vain that we point them to Queen Victoria, ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... garden. I took off my coat and lent him a hand, and when he stopped to rest from his labours—which was every five minutes, for he had no kind of physique—he would mop his brow and rub his spectacles and declaim about the good smell of the earth and the joy of ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... power of excitement that is described in the spinning dervishes of the East. Like them she would spin until all around her were giddy, while her own brain, instead of being disturbed, was excited to great action. Pausing, she would declaim, verses of others, or her own, or act many parts, with strange catchwords and burdens, that seemed to act with mystical power on her own fancy, sometimes stimulating her to convulse the hearers with laughter, sometimes to melt them to tears. When her power began to languish, she ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... Wilder. 'I took a fancy to declaim a favourite little bit of Euripides in Endell Street, and a uniformed ass came along and ran me in. And being penniless ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... a fictionist lies in the fact that the history of one's imaginary people halts just in proportion as one's mind is burdened with the sorrowful realities of one's own life. A troubled bank clerk can (I believe) cast up a column of figures, an actor can declaim while his heart is breaking, but a novelist can't—or at any rate I can't—write stories while some friend or relative is in pain and calling for relief. Composition is dependent in my case upon a delicately adjusted mood, and a very small pebble ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... When Talma heard her declaim, at the time of her earliest celebrity in Paris, he said: "Here is a woman of whom I can still learn. One turn of her beautiful head, one glance of her eye, one light motion of her hand, is, with her, sufficient ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris

... so long will the law of sympathy hold good. And by that law it is certain that the way to promote, so far as we can, a spirit and tone of true worship in our people is to possess—and to show—that spirit ourselves, as we lead, and also join, their worship. Never declaim the prayers, but always pray them, from the ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule

... Lancashire or Yorkshire, is true enough; and, that we have fewer persons who use decided vulgarisms, in the way of false grammar, than is the case in England, may be also accurate; but, it might be well for us to correct a great many faults into which we have certainly fallen, before we declaim with so much confidence about the purity of our English. [37] To return to ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... their watchwords, to set their party a-going. They seemed to act with the most extraordinary concert; they seemed to know the exact moment when they were to give the word, and drown, in their hurly-burly, the voice of the actor, who had a passionate part to declaim, and thus break the connexion between the speakers. All this produced so complete an effect, that it seemed as if the actors themselves had been of the conspiracy, so wilful and so active was the execution of the plot. It was particularly during the fifth and sixth ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... one's thought to an audience, it is of the first importance that one should speak and not declaim. There is, of course, a way of talking on the platform that is merely negatively good, a way that is fitting enough in general style, but weak. There should be breadth, and strength, and reach. But this does not mean any necessity of sending forth pointless successive sentences over ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... I began to declaim it. "Sir, it has been brought to my notice that the pipes—". I broke off short. "Hullo!" said I, my eyes on the wall, "what has become of the key ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... allowed. But the Bishop was not the only clergyman of the Church of Rome in the province, and the See of Rome has its instruments in every ecclesiastical grade. The priests, as a body were very much annoyed at the Union Bill. They did not fail to declaim against it. Nor were they to be blamed. The French Canadians were indeed, to a man, opposed to the union. The English population were, of course, in favor of the scheme. Horrified at popery, an Englishman honestly believed that popery had no ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... deal of nonsense talked about the game by superior people who pose as authorities upon the delinquencies of ragamuffin youth, and who declaim upon the demoralisation attending this ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes

... Alexander's name, who, however, in my opinion, was not known to them even by common fame; and while, in Athens, a state reduced to weakness by the Macedonian arms, which at the very time saw the ruins of Thebes smoking in its neighbourhood, men had spirit enough to declaim with freedom against him, as is manifest from the copies of their speeches, which have been preserved; [we are to be told] that out of such a number of Roman chiefs, no one would have freely uttered his sentiments. How great soever our idea of this man's ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... it excellent practise, both for memory and delivery, to commit the specimen speeches found in this volume and declaim them, with all attention to the principles we have put before you. William Ellery Channing, himself a distinguished speaker, years ago had this to say of ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... committee-but it is put off till next Tuesday. To-day we had nothing but the giving up the Heydon election, when Mr. Ppultney had an opportunity (as Mr. Chute and Mr. Robinson would not take the trouble to defend a cause which they could not carry) to declaim upon corruption: had it come to a trial, there were eighteen witnesses ready to swear positive bribery against Mr. Pultney. I would write to Mr. Chute, and thank him for his letter which you sent me, but I am so out of humour at his brother's losing his seat, that I cannot ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... to each of his audience separately, cleared his throat impressively, and then began to declaim in a stilted, stagey voice, and with absurd ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells

... also happen, he tells us, that a philosopher may be swift of foot. But it is not in his character of philosopher that he either wins a race or invents a machine. No, to be sure. The business of a philosopher was to declaim in praise of poverty with two millions sterling out at usury, to meditate epigrammatic conceits about the evils of luxury, in gardens which moved the envy of sovereigns, to rant about liberty, while fawning on the insolent ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... "and now what are these extraordinary troubles of yours? Don't declaim," he added, as the Irishman raised his hand and opened his mouth, preparatory to another torrent of complaint; "just say in ten words, if you can, what ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison

... Virginia." At the end of the week the Major's hand was held out, but his heart still bore his grievance, and he began quoting William L. Yancey, as he had once quoted Mr. Addison. In the little meetings at Uplands or at Chericoke, he would now declaim the words of the impassioned agitator as vigorously as in the old days he had recited those of the polished gentleman of letters. The rector and the doctor would sit silent and abashed, and only the Governor would break in now and then with: "You go too far, Major. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... eldest son of Count Jzsef Dessewffy and Eleonora Sztaray, was born at Nagy-Mihly, county Zempln, Hungary. Carefully educated at his father's house, he was accustomed to the best society of his day. While still a child he could declaim most of the Iliad in Greek without a book, and read and quoted Tacitus with enthusiasm. Under the noble influence of Ferencz Kazinczy he became acquainted with the chief masterpieces of European literature in their original tongues. He was particularly fond of the English, and one ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... she saw the man against whom she had sworn a deadly hatred, her mobile countenance assumed a most threatening aspect. She turned pale, her voice grew hoarse, the line she had begun to declaim died on her lips. But soon, taking up her ballata afresh, she proceeded ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee

... "Listen," and he began to declaim the letter aloud: "'Oh, wondrous genius, a flower but now unclosing'—— Got it, Charlot? Another of them!" He tore open another envelope. "Ah-ha! Photograph enclosed, and will I send it back if the original is not to my fancy!" He flung himself back in his chair to laugh. "Where is my collar?" ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... loser. He was made Groom of the Bedchamber to the Prince of Wales, and continued to declaim against the ministers with unabated violence and with increasing ability. The question of maritime right, then agitated between Spain and England, called forth all his powers. He clamoured for war with a vehemence which it is not easy to reconcile ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... day when Jerome Rogron and his sister began to declaim against "the clique" they were, without being aware of it, on the road to having a society of their own; their house was to become a rendezvous for other interests seeking a centre,—those of the hitherto floating ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac

... municipal authority has been publicly cast into the scale. "Commissaries of the Commune, accompanied by municipal secretaries, with tables, inkstands, paper and registers, promenade about Paris preceded by drums and a body of militia." From time to time, they make "a solemn halt," and declaim against Brissot, Vergniaud, Guadet, and then "demand and obtain signatures."[34108]—Thus extorted and borne to the Convention by the mayor, in the name of the council-general of the Commune and of the thirty-five ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... am perfectly at rest, especially since thou hast a large property indeed, though thou art not so rich as Pallas or Seneca. For seest thou, with us at present it is well to write verses, to sing to a lute, to declaim, and to compete in the Circus; but better, and especially safer, not to write verses, not to play, not to sing, and not to compete in the Circus. Best of all, is it to know how to admire when Bronzebeard admires. Thou art a comely young man; hence Poppaea may fall in love with ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... matter of feeling and taste. A French officer, who describes to you, in the liveliest manner, and with all the appearance of unfeigned sympathy, the miseries and devastations occasioned by his countrymen among the unoffending inhabitants of foreign states, proceeds, in the same breath, to declaim with enthusiastic admiration on the untarnished honour of the French arms, and the great mind of the Emperor. A Parisian tradesman, who goes to the theatre that he may see the representation of integrity of conduct, conjugal affection, and domestic happiness, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... of genius, refused to sing "Il pleut, il pleut, Bergere," but condescended to declaim "La Cigalle ayant chante tout l'ete," and did it as he alone can do it. When he came to the end of the fable, "Eh bien, dansez maintenant," he gave such a tragic shake to his head that the voluminous folds of his cravat became loosened and hung ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... Next morning "Mr. Macaulay breakfasted with us, nothing hurt or dismayed by his last night's correction. Being a man of good sense he had a just admiration of Dr. Johnson." He was rewarded by seeing Johnson at his very best, and hearing him declaim some of the finest lines that ever were written in a manner worthy of ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... used by them — cloths, swords, spears — are obtained by barter from the other peoples. Unlike all the other peoples, they have no form of sepulture, but simply leave the corpse of a comrade in the rude shelter in which he died. They sing and declaim rude melancholy songs or dirges with peculiar skill and striking effect. Their language is distinctive, but is apparently allied to the Kenyah ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... who declaim on the inequalities of sex, the disabilities and limitations of one as against the other, show themselves as ignorant of the first principles of life as would that philosopher who should undertake to show the comparative power of the positive as against the negative electricity, of the centrifugal ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... see Versailles. As to the Marquess's depriving the court of Donna Laura's presence, their guest protested against it as an act of overt disloyalty to the sovereign; and what most surprised Odo, who had often heard his grandfather declaim against the Count as a cheap jackanapes that hung about the court for what he could make at play, was the indulgence with which the Marquess received his visitor's sallies. Father and daughter in fact vied in ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... you mean. Come, fill your glass, and a truce to your preaching. Here's a pretty fellow has let his conscience sleep for these five years, and has now plucked morality from the leaves of his grandmother's bible, beginning to declaim against what he has practised half his life-time. Why, I tell you once more, my schemes are all come to perfection. I am now convinced Olivia loves me—at our last conversation, she said she would rely ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... in every department of life. Look," continued Jew Mike, getting into a philosophical strain, and stroking his enormous beard with an air of profound complacency—"Look at that venerable looking old gentleman, who every Sabbath stands in his pulpit to declaim against wickedness and fleshy lusts. Mark his libidinous eye, as he follows that painted strumpet to her filthy den. There's hypocrisy. Then turn your eyes toward a sister city, and mark that grey-headed, ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson

... not get out of this accursed street! Here another large crowd bars our passage; some proclamations and notices have just been placarded on the door of the chief of the district police; people are reading them aloud; some declaim them in a tone of bombast; while a thousand commentaries, more satirical than the text, are uttered ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... against these preachers of licentiousness, and their diabolical conduct, that Luther began first to declaim. ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... have next to deal with that long oration, austere as any censor's, which Pudens delivered on the subject of my mirror. He nearly exploded, so violently did he declaim against the horrid nature of my offence. 'The philosopher owns a mirror, the philosopher actually possesses a mirror.' Grant that I possess it: if I denied it, you might really think that your accusation had gone home: still it is by no means a necessary inference that I am in the habit of adorning ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... heart the most celebrated dialogues of Racine and Voltaire, and they used to declaim them in the corridor. Bouvard, as if he were at the Theatre Francais, strutted, with his hand on Pecuchet's shoulder, stopping at intervals; and, with rolling eyes, he would open wide his arms, and accuse the Fates. He would give forth fine bursts of grief ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... Juvenal's is just the old civic spirit turned to fierceness by despair. And he strikes out unerringly enough at the ministers of Rome's decline—at the poets who chatter and the rhetoricians who declaim on merely 'literary' topics; the rich who fritter away life on private luxuries and the pursuit of trivial aims; the debased Greek with his "smattering of encyclopaedic knowledge," but no devotion to the city in which he ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... a little after four o'clock. The Convention, with the self-possession that so often amazes us in its proceedings, went on with formal business for another hour. At five they broke up. For life, as the poets tell, is a daily stage-play; men declaim their high heroic parts, then doff the buskin or the sock, wash away the paint from their cheeks, and gravely sit down to meat. The Conventionals, as they ate their dinners, were unconscious, apparently, that the great crisis of ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... rendered it in terms of color, and a musician in terms of tone-feeling, and a poet in terms of tone-feeling plus thought. Each one of them finds something for himself, selects his own "subject," from the material presented by the quiet sea, and whatever he may find belongs to him. We declaim against the confusion of the genres, the attempt to render in the terms of one art what belongs, as we had supposed, to another art, and we are often right in our protest. Yet artists have always been jumping each other's claims, and the sole test of the lawfulness ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... sins of public servants and the need of better things; in a nation full of vice he alone is pure and nice, he alone has got a halo and a flossy pair of wings. In the country of the bores men who wish to do their chores are disturbed by agitators who declaim of iron heels, urging toiling men to rise, with chain lightning in their eyes and do something to the tyrant and his car with bloody wheels. In the country of the bores evermore the talksmith pours floods of language on the people, who were better left alone. ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... unconsciously on the shoulder of Raymond; he held her hand: he kissed her sunken tear-stained cheek. He told her, that her sufferings were now over: no one possessed the art of consoling like Raymond; he did not reason or declaim, but his look shone with sympathy; he brought pleasant images before the sufferer; his caresses excited no distrust, for they arose purely from the feeling which leads a mother to kiss her wounded child; a desire to demonstrate in every possible way the truth of his feelings, and the keenness ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... next day, which was Wednesday, in the hall, where we went to hear the boys declaim. I saw him, sitting by himself in a chair, instead of being with the classes. He was in a brown study, unaware that he was observed; both hands were in his pockets, and his legs were stretched out till his pantaloons had receded ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... usual, for the Sunday as for the Bible, he will have to fall back on the old Church. What in the world could he do without her? He will find there an authority, and he is obliged to recognize it, even if he does on ordinary occasions declaim against and condemn it. Incidentally, if his eyes are open, he will discover that his individually interpreted Bible has failed most woefully to do its work; it ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... hear persons declaim against teaching children what they do not understand. If by this is meant that children should not learn a set of words as parrots do, merely by the ear, and without attaching any idea to what they utter, no ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... and we didn't know it!" bawled Bud. "Listen here at what the witless wight's been a-writin'!" Then, seated upon the top rail and with his hat set far back on his head, Bud Norris began to declaim inexorably the first two verses, until the indignant author came over and interfered with voice and a vicious yank at Bud's foot, which brought that ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... affairs with. He is deeply impressed with the importance of our parish business, and prides himself, not a little, on his style of addressing the parishioners in vestry assembled. His views are rather confined than extensive; his principles more narrow than liberal. He has been heard to declaim very loudly in favour of the liberty of the press, and advocates the repeal of the stamp duty on newspapers, because the daily journals who now have a monopoly of the public, never give verbatim reports of vestry meetings. He would not appear egotistical for the world, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... long had they not believed it was imposed upon them by the Most High, and that it was necessary to their happiness. It is impossible for error to be eternal; it must give way to the power of truth. The priests, who think, know this well, and the whole ecclesiastical body continually declaim against all those who wish to enlighten the human race and unveil the conspiracies of their spiritual guides. They fear the piercing eyes of philosophy; they fear the reign of reason, which will never be that of tyranny or anarchy. ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... house was uninhabitable. The very owners could not live in it; and yet—so in imagination we heard Serjeant Playfire declaim—"The lady from whom the TRUTH had that day been reluctantly wrung had the audacity to insist that delicate women and tender children should continue to inhabit a dwelling over which a CURSE seemed brooding—a dwelling ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... also in their wages); now the printers for some time have been in comparative depression.... I do not contend that all lowering of wages by masters is merciful and just, but that some may be; whereas the Socialists and Co. instantly declaim against all or any lowering, without entering into any details as to present or past history of the trade. When I said that machinery is in every light the friend of the poor, I do not think I overlooked the occasional mischief caused by its sudden introduction.... The effect of machinery ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... will venture to say, if the writer should be disposed to bear hard upon Radicals, that he would be influenced by a desire to pay court to princes, or to curry favour with Tories, or from being a blind admirer of the Duke of Wellington; but the writer is not going to declaim against Radicals, that is, real Republicans, or their principles; upon the whole, he is something of an admirer of both. The writer has always had as much admiration for everything that is real and honest as he has had contempt for the opposite. Now, real Republicanism ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow



Words linked to "Declaim" :   perorate, verbalise, perform, do, declamation, scan, protest, talk, elocute, recite, mouth, utter



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com