oration

Napoleon himself appeared at the meeting on the following Sunday morning and pronounced a short oration in Boxer’s honour.

George Orwell -- Animal Farm

They sent cunning messengers, raised to oration the way Masks are raised to war.

Sabaa Tahir -- An Ember in the Ashes

Most of those who have spoken here before me have commended the lawgiver who added this oration to our other funeral customs.

Thucydides -- Pericles’s Funeral Oration

But I also realize that I was at that time in many ways afflicted by a staggeringly puerile inexperience: far from my mind was any idea that Nathan—despite his manic tone of voice, the hectic oratory, the sweat, the walleyed expression, the frazzled tension, the whole portrait he presented of one whose entire nervous system down to its minutest ganglia was in the throes of a fiery convulsion—might be dangerously disturbed.

William Styron -- Sophie’s Choice

Or perhaps he was capable of such flights of oratory only under the stimulus of crisis.

Diana Gabaldon -- Outlander

In my obsessive reading the story that haunted me most was Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence, stolen from the oratory of San Lorenzo and slashed from the frame so carelessly that the collector who’d commissioned the theft had burst out crying when he saw it and refused to take it.

Donna Tartt -- The Goldfinch

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The countess went into the oratory and there Sonya found her on her knees before the icons that had been left here and there hanging on the wall.

Leo Tolstoy -- War and Peace

It is not necessary to set down the rest of the oration.

Mark Twain -- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

In fact, Sam considered oratory as his vocation, and never let slip an opportunity of magnifying his office.

Harriet Beecher Stowe -- Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Mustapha Mond’s oratory was almost up to synthetic standards.

Aldous Huxley -- Brave New World

What he did on those occasions was to turn up his cuffs, stick up his hair, and give us Mark Antony’s oration over the body of Caesar.

Charles Dickens -- Great Expectations

Upon my word it was magnificent, the style of the oratory.

James Joyce -- Dubliners

But you’re not here to make funeral orations for dead traitors.

Cornelia Funke -- Inkheart

Having made this well-turned speech, Villefort looked carefully around to mark the effect of his oratory, much as he would have done had he been addressing the bench in open court.

Alexandre Dumas -- The Count of Monte Cristo

But I told Ted Nielsen and the others that we’d have no banquets for you and no oratory.

Ayn Rand -- Atlas Shrugged

The imagery of the Indian, both in his poetry and in his oratory, is oriental; chastened, and perhaps improved, by the limited range of his practical knowledge.

James Fenimore Cooper -- The Last of the Mohicans

He had delivered a melancholy oration previous to his funeral, and had doubtless in the packet of letters, presented various keepsakes to relatives.

Stephen Crane -- The Red Badge of Courage

On my graduation day I delivered an oration in which I showed that humility was the secret, indeed, the very essence of progress.

Ralph Ellison -- Invisible Man

And Chamberlain had gone on to school to make an oration on the subject: Man, the Killer Angel.

Michael Shaara -- The Killer Angels

The supper things cleared away, Gerald resumed his oration, but with little satisfaction to himself and none at all to his audience.

Margaret Mitchell -- Gone with the Wind

She asked me the other day if I knew what your oration is to be about.

Willa Cather -- My Antonia

The sermon which he now delivered was marked by the same characteristics of style and manner as the general series of his pulpit oratory.

Nathaniel Hawthorne -- The Minister’s Black Veil

During the five minutes or so that Mr. Chillip devoted to the delivery of this oration, my aunt eyed him narrowly.

Charles Dickens -- David Copperfield

The finest display of oratory I ever heard was a speech made by John F Taylor at the college historical society.

James Joyce -- Ulysses

I stood waiting, bent forward with my feet apart, flat-footed, till they ended their interminable orations.

John Gardner -- Grendel

Madam, you have bereft me of all words, Only my blood speaks to you in my veins; And there is such confusion in my powers As, after some oration fairly spoke By a beloved prince, there doth appear Among the buzzing pleased multitude; Where every something, being blent together, Turns to a wild of nothing, save of joy, Express’d and not express’d.

William Shakespeare -- The Merchant of Venice

He certainly did add ’spirit’ to the meetings, and ’a tone’ to the paper, for his orations convulsed his hearers and his contributions were excellent, being patriotic, classical, comical, or dramatic, but never sentimental.

Louisa May Alcott -- Little Women

The first room, opening on the street, served him as dining-room, the second was his bedroom, and the third his oratory.

Victor Hugo -- Les Miserables

Which of these two speeches, think you, would be the best oration for your own funeral?

William Makepeace Thackeray -- Vanity Fair

The Heckler lowers his newspaper from his face; a slow fierce smile spreads over his face as he leans forward with tensed throat muscles to catch Chance’s burst of oratory.

Tennessee Williams -- A Streetcar Named Desire

The evening being calm, and the windows still open, these orations could be distinctly heard.

Thomas Hardy -- The Mayor of Casterbridge

It was a reassuring oration, I thought, but the passengers were not all soothed.

Kenneth Oppel -- Airborn

Another stroke of his oratory made me asham’d of that, and determin’d me to give the silver; and he finish’d so admirably, that I empty’d my pocket wholly into the collector’s dish, gold and all.

Benjamin Franklin -- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

An alliterative prefix served as an ornament of oratory.

Oscar Wilde -- The Picture of Dorian Gray

He gave a Speech Day oration in Greek, I recollect, and was outstandingly first-rate in school theatricals.

James Hilton -- Lost Horizon

I don’t put everything I know in the papers, but I know that Willie isn’t in this race because you admire his oratory.

Robert Penn Warren -- All the King’s Men

Francie recited passages she knew by heart—Portia’s speech, Marc Antony’s funeral oration, "Tomorrow and tomorrow"—the obvious things that are remembered from Shakespeare.

Betty Smith -- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Finally I built him an oratory removed from the house, and he began to spend most of every day there and often the early evening.

Anne Rice -- Interview with the Vampire

At the end of that depraved oration, two of the lesser priests rushed forward and lifted their master-or mistress, as the case might be-off the litter and onto the face of the altar.

Christopher Paolini -- Brisingr

Yet stay awhile; Thou shalt not back till I have borne this corse Into the market-place: there shall I try, In my oration, how the people take The cruel issue of these bloody men; According to the which thou shalt discourse To young Octavius of the state of things.

William Shakespeare -- Julius Caesar

They had sunk into a state of motionlessness while K. gave his oration, and it had not been possible to raise them from this passivity even when the judge was being humiliated.

Franz Kafka -- The Trial

And Einhorn with his graces, learning, oratory, and register of effects was not out to influence me practically.

Saul Bellow -- The Adventures of Augie March

When dinner was almost done, the nurse came in with a child of a year old in her arms, who immediately spied me, and began a squall that you might have heard from London-Bridge to Chelsea, after the usual oratory of infants, to get me for a plaything.

Jonathan Swift -- Gulliver’s Travels

This act of pious charity performed, Cedric again motioned them to follow him, gliding over the stone floor with a noiseless tread; and, after ascending a few steps, opened with great caution the door of a small oratory, which adjoined to the chapel.

Sir Walter Scott -- Ivanhoe

After his oration on the two hundredth founding of Plymouth Colony, a young Harvard scholar wrote: I was never so excited by public speaking before in my life.

John F. Kennedy -- Profiles in Courage

The priest’s attention seemed to retire to some private oratory to wait until she got through.

Flannery O’Connor -- A Good Man is Hard to Find AND OTHER STORIES