"Extemporize" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... modern mind he was too easily pleased, if the following story is typical. He was sitting, one day, in his saloon with a number of literary men about him, when, noticing a lemon shaped like a hand and fingers, he asked them to extemporize some verses on that subject. Abd Abu Ali Al-Hasan Ibn Rashik Al-Kairawani at once recited the following lines: A lemon, with its extremities spread out, appears before all eyes without being injured. It seems to hold out a hand towards the Creator, ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... service ('Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers', p. 217). Beckford had been taught music by Mozart, and Rogers says ('ibid'.) that "in the evening Beckford would amuse us by reading one of his unpublished works; or he would extemporize on the pianoforte, producing the most novel ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... him. This, no doubt, gave the boy a facility, and led to the great celebrity he acquired for his improvisatore talent. He was soon much sought for in society, and a friend has told me that he has heard him, on sitting down to the piano, extemporize two or three hundred lines, containing humorous remarks upon all the company. On one occasion, Sir Roderick Murchison was present, and some would have been a little puzzled how to bring such a name into rhyme, but he did not hesitate a ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... him from chafing at the vexation of not finding his father ready to meet him when he came to town. A letter had awaited Adrian at the hotel, which said, "Detain him till you hear further from me. Take him about with you into every form of society." No more than that. Adrian had to extemporize, that the baronet had gone down to Wales on pressing business, and would be back in a week or so. For ulterior inventions and devices wherewith to keep the young gentleman in town, he applied to Mrs. Doria. "Leave him to me," said Mrs. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... attention now to the show which had been prepared in his honor, and which was really well enough worth seeing and hearing. The English were, in those days, an altogether dramatic people; ready and able, as in Bideford that day, to extemporize a pageant, a masque, or any effort of the Thespian art short of the regular drama. For they were, in the first place, even down to the very poorest, a well-fed people, with fewer luxuries than we, but more abundant necessaries; and while beef, ale, and good ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... pectinated character, of shells covering the walls of a grotto,—a peculiarity to which, when showing my specimen to Agassiz, while it had yet no duplicate, I directed his attention, and which led him to extemporize for it, on the spot, the generic name Ostralepis, or shell-scale. On studying it more leisurely, however, in the process of assigning to it a place in his great work, where the reader may now find it figured (Table XIV., fig. 8), the naturalist found reason ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... necessity for its operation. The brave boy had scraped unseen in the out-house, in the cellar, in the wood-shed, in the stable, in the unused parlour, in the cow-stalls, in the barn, and wherever he could set up his triangular bit of looking-glass without observation, or extemporize a mirror by sticking up his hat on the outside of a window-pane. The result now was that, did he neglect to use the instrument he once had trifled with, a fine rust broke out upon his countenance on the first day, a golden lichen ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... act out that story we were reading the other day the next time you have some of the young people down? You and Leslie and Jane with the help of one or two others could do it, and there wouldn't be much to learn. If you all read it over once or twice more, you'd have it so you could easily extemporize. Do you know, I think there's a hidden lesson in that story that would do some of those boys and girls good if they could see it lived out, and perhaps set them to ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... several of the best musicians of the city, both in playing and composition. Albrechtsberger, one of these, was a famous contrapuntist of his time, and the student gained much from his teaching. The young musician was irresistible when he seated himself at the piano to extemporize. "His improvisating was most brilliant and striking," wrote Carl Czerny, a pupil of Beethoven. "In whatever company he might be, he knew how to produce such an effect upon the listeners that frequently all eyes would be wet, and some listeners ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... were written on separate slips of paper, and these being placed in a box, each bard took one folded up and with but brief preparation was expected to extemporize a poem on the theme he had drawn. The contest speedily commenced, and to me this part of the proceedings was far and away the most entertaining. Of course, being, as I said, ignorant of the language, I could not understand the matter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various |
