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Monologue   /mˈɑnəlˌɔg/   Listen
Monologue

noun
1.
Speech you make to yourself.  Synonym: soliloquy.
2.
A long utterance by one person (especially one that prevents others from participating in the conversation).
3.
A (usually long) dramatic speech by a single actor.



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"Monologue" Quotes from Famous Books



... a danger signal. Whenever his thoughts reached that particular point, Raf tried to think of something else, to break the chain of dismal foreboding. How? By joining in Wonstead's monologue of complaint and regret? Raf had heard the same words over and over so often that they no longer had any meaning—except as a series of sounds he might miss if the man who shared this ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... possesses interest only as an index to the taste of the public, which surely received it with delight. Strangely enough the principal scene between Joseph and Selicha, Potiphar's wife, is highly discreet. In a monologue, she gives passionate utterance to her love. Then Joseph appears, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... not been for Thurston, and for his own part, he almost wished that he had been permitted to do so, because he thought none but a fool would ever commit suicide, and the fewer fools there were in the world the better, etc., etc. His monologue was suddenly arrested by Henrietta's rushing forward to lift up Sans Souci, who had turned very pale, and dropped from her seat to the floor, where she lay silently quivering and gasping, like some poor ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... making Ruth feel that she was trustworthy, that she offered her friendship sincerely.... That she was an individual to depend on if need came for dependence. They talked. At first Hilda carried on a monologue. Gradually Ruth became more like her sincere, calm self, and she met Hilda's advances without reservation.... When Hilda left her at her home both girls carried away a sense of ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... old colonel, continuing his monologue, "always to let himself get caught in that way." He was plainly disappointed in the little chubby boy, and could not endure the ...
— Good Blood • Ernst Von Wildenbruch

... Mr. Alcott in Andover, it is true, but we did not look upon him exactly through Mr. Emerson's marine-glass; and, though the Professor did his hospitable best to sustain his end of the conversation, it swayed off gracefully into monologue. We listened deferentially while the philosopher pronounced Bronson Alcott the greatest mind of our day—I think he said the greatest since Plato. He was capable of it, in moments of his own exaltation. I thought I detected a twinkle in my father's ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various

... prayer must be conceived as an active intercourse between the worshipper and a Person other than himself, who is the object of his worship. It is not a soliloquy—what the Germans expressively call a Selbstgespraech, or "self-talk"; it is not a monologue, but a dialogue; it is not a mere contemplation, but addressed to Someone who is thought of as willing to listen and able to answer. As Sabatier has well said, "Prayer is religion in act; that is, prayer is real religion." Wherever men believe in a personal God, as distinct from an "all-inclusive ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... However, her monologue was wasted on the moon, for no one argued with her. Grim led the way-off the highroad now, and down dark defiles that set the camels moaning, while their riders yelled alternately to Allah and apostrophized their ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy

... sustained masquerade. I had never seen before anything in the least comparable to this magnificent fete. I moved along, indolently, in my domino and mask, loitering, now and then, to enjoy a clever dialogue, a farcical song, or an amusing monologue, but, at the same time, keeping my eyes about me, lest my friend in the black domino, with the little white cross on his breast, ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... admirable judge of what was permanent in literature) liked him best. Its narrow bounds, but fourteen paces from end to end, turn into a virtue his too common fault of giving undue prominence to every passing emotion. He excels in monologue, and the law of the sonnet tempers monologue with mercy. In "The Excursion" we are driven to the subterfuge of a French verdict of extenuating circumstances. His mind had not that reach and elemental movement of Milton's, which, like ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... shadows—rabbits' and dogs' heads and so on; George Foster does them splendidly, and then have some one recite and some one else do a monologue in costume." ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith

... weather, and the small gossip of the film world, and a judiciously expurgated sketch of his life since he had last seen her. Marie answered him whenever his monologue required answer, but she was unresponsive, uninterested—bored. Joe twisted his mustache, eyed her ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower

... I rose. He had spoken almost without interruption for an hour and a quarter. I had only said a few words here and there. During this sort of long monologue Madame Adelaide passed as she retired to her apartments. The King said to her: "I will join you directly," and he continued his conversation with me. It was nearly half-past eleven when I ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... the wind that heaps sand in a desert, there stirr'd Through his voice an emotion that swept every word Into one angry wail; as, with feverish change, He continued his monologue, fitful and strange. "Woe to him in whose nature, once kindled, the torch Of Passion burns downward to blacken and scorch! But shame, shame and sorrow, O woman, to thee Whose hand sow'd the seed of destruction ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... departing weary and depressed at the sight of so much misery, when the physician begs him to stay as they come in sight of the "cell" of a specially interesting patient, Sir Eustace Grey, late of Greyling Hall. Sir Eustace greets them as they approach, plunges at once into monologue, and relates (with occasional warnings from the doctor against over-excitement) the sad story of his misfortunes and consequent loss of reason. He begins with a ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger

... recognizable, "Our interview lasted for three hours, during which he talked two hours and three quarters." Nothing could be more copious than his talk; and furthermore it was always, virtually or literally, of the nature of a monologue; suffering no interruption, however reverent; hastily putting aside all foreign additions, annotations, or most ingenuous desires for elucidation, as well-meant superfluities which would never do. Besides, it was talk not flowing any-whither like a river, but spreading every-whither in inextricable ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... and whenever the gobernador stopped for expectoration, the other one would utter an assenting "hay" ("yes"). The Cora language is guttural, but quite musical, and when I heard it at a distance it reminded me in its cadence of one of the dialects of central Norway. However, the gobernador's monologue soon became very tiresome, and finally I made my bed and lay down. After a while they retired, but every evening as long as I stayed in the place, his Honour came to bore me with his talk. I generally took him out to my men, who entertained ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... merriment. The phonograph is becoming a powerful agency for disseminating a knowledge of English amongst the natives throughout Alaska, and one wishes that it were put to better use than the reproduction of silly and often vulgar monologue and dialogue and trashy ragtime music. As an index of the taste of those who purchase records, the selection brought to this country ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... monologue he continues, and addresses to the candidate the mid[-e]/ gag[)i]/kwew[)i]n/, or Mid[-e]/ sermon, ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman

... sat back in his chair, took his tea-cup as though it were a fresh addition to his responsibilities, and began to talk. He talked apparently without even breathing. He began on the weather, drifted on to art and music, and was just beginning a monologue on The Novel, when William rose and crept from the room like a guilty spirit. He found Mr. Blank under the library table, having heard a noise in the kitchen and fearing a visitor. A cigar and a silver snuffer had fallen from his pocket to the floor. He hastily replaced them. ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton

... an observant person he would have noted that her very brief replies did not exactly encourage further questions. But his idea of conversation was either a monologue or a means of obtaining information, so he instantly demanded, "What ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... summer-house, a little wooden room under the down-sloping boughs of a huge cedar, and pursued their conversation—or rather Bascombe pursued his monologue. A lively girl would in all probability have been bored to death by him, but Helen was not a lively girl, and was not bored at all. Ere they went into the house she had heard, amongst a hundred other things of wisdom, ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... Banquet, whether by the Alumni of the Shorthand College or under the auspices of the Piano Movers' Pleasure Club, he was right up at the Head Table with his Hair rumpled, ready to exchange a Monologue for a few warm Oysters and a ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... very little; and so much the better. Her "comely face and her fair bodie" (to repeat once more a beloved quotation) speak for her to the ruin of her lover and herself—to the age-long delectation of readers. On the other hand, the whole speech is Des Grieux', and never was a monologue better suited or justified. The worst of such things is usually that there are in them all sorts of second thoughts of the author. There is none of this littleness in the speech of Des Grieux. He is a gentle youth in the very best sense of the term, and as we gather—not ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... his house in Bow Street, Covent Garden." At one of these performances Samuel Foote made his first appearance upon the stage, sustaining the part of Othello. Presently, Foote ventured to give upon the stage of the Haymarket, a monologue entertainment, called "Diversions of a Morning." At the instance of Lacy, however, one of the patentees of Drury Lane Theatre, whom Foote had satirised, the performance was soon prohibited. But Foote was not easily discouraged; ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... seen the body of a German lieutenant, the head and arms of which were hanging into our trench. The man who had cut off the foot used to sit and carry on a one-sided conversation with this officer, used to argue and point out why Germany was in the wrong. During all of this monologue, I never heard him say anything out of the way, anything that would have hurt the officer's feelings had he been alive. He was square all right, wouldn't even take advantage of a dead man in ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey

... ten minutes he chose to sit in apparent dudgeon, his hands folded in front of him on the hilt of his tremendous sabre, growling out a monologue in his own language for Mahommed Gunga's benefit. Then Mahommed Gunga silenced him with an uplifted hand, and ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... little kinetoscope was dropped, Graham was invited to stand in front of the machine and the tailor muttered some instructions to the crop-haired lad, who answered in guttural tones and with words Graham did not recognise. The boy then went to conduct an incomprehensible monologue in the corner, and the tailor pulled out a number of slotted arms terminating in little discs, pulling them out until the discs were flat against the body of Graham, one at each shoulder blade, one at the elbows, ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... dreary affair. Uncle David was out, Aunt Nellie had a headache so was unusually quiet, and Merle, with red eyes, sat silent and brooding. Mavis tried desperately to make a little conversation, but it was impossible to maintain a monologue, and she soon dropped the futile attempt. Merle, after eating half a piece of bread and butter and declining a chocolate biscuit, begged suddenly to be excused, and with two big unruly tears splashing down her cheeks fled from ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil

... Narrator, the words of Jesus himself, however, being used invariably in the first person, and sung by the baritone voice, as when he says, "If my Deeds have been evil," immediately following the bass recitative. After another monologue by the Narrator, ensues the march to the cross,—an instrumental number which is brilliant in its color effects and somewhat barbaric in tone. Without any break, the sopranos enter with the words, "Forth the ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... times he allowed one to see an unpardonable insolence. His charm was acquired and systematised, a mask which he wore only when it pleased him, while the charm of Stevenson belonged to him like the colour of his hair. If Stevenson's talk became monologue we did not know it, because our one object was to show by our attention that he need never leave off. If thought failed him we would not combat what he had said, or start some new theme, but would encourage him with a question; and one felt that it had ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats

... "Cul," he said, "you are a born monologist. Where you got that stuff I don't know, But you would be a riot in the two-a-day. Quit this hanky-panky And I'll make you a headliner." Well, I fell for his line of talk Like the sod busters had fallen for mine. Aaron Hoffman wrote me a topical monologue; Max Marx made me a suit of clothes; And Lew Dockstader wised me up On how to jockey my laughs. I opened in Hartford; Believe me, I was some scream. I gave them gravy, and hokum, And when they ate it up I came through With the old jasbo, Than which there is nothing so efficacious ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton

... spectators, and the stage, together with the orchestra where the choir in song or musical recitation reflected the sympathies and views of the spectators of the play. At first there was only one actor, and, of course, a monologue. Aeschylus is said to have brought in a second actor, and Sophocles a third. These, with Euripides, were the three great dramatists of Greece. The choral song, which had been the chief thing, was made secondary to the dialogue. Aeschylus, at the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... During this involuntary monologue we had strolled along the road which Nourrigat had originally indicated as the direction of our friend Pistre. Presently he led us into the church, a humble little village sanctuary. A shell had carried away half the apse, and ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard

... good many scowling and indignant glances, the while their professional visitors sang another of their delightfully novel sacred duets. Its charm of harmony for once fell upon unsympathetic ears. But then Sister Soulsby began another monologue, defending this way of collecting money, chaffing the assemblage with bright-eyed impudence on their having been trapped, and scoring, one after another, neat and jocose little personal points on local characteristics, at which everybody but the individual touched grinned broadly. ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... his monologue paused. He stood up slowly, saying that he had to leave us for a minute or so, a few minutes, and, without changing the direction of my gaze, I saw him walking slowly away from us towards the near end of the field. We ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... church, is North End Lodge, the residence of the late Mr. Albert Smith, and where he died on the 23rd May, 1860. As novelist, dramatist, and lecturer, he had achieved considerable reputation; and his unexpected death, at the early age of forty-four, brought to a sudden close the most popular monologue entertainment of this, or of any, time. Mr. Smith was an amusing writer and a most genial companion, and was ever ready to assist a professional brother in the hour of need. Against the brick wall, close to the gate of North End Lodge, is a slab with the inscription "From ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... and nimble thimble-rigger," said Smith genially, "while I take ten minutes' rest we'll have a little polite conversation. Or, rather, a monologue. Because I don't want ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers

... was in love with the brilliant Lady Ashburton. Her jealousy was absurd, as this great lady invited Carlyle to her dinners because he was the most brilliant talker in all England, and he accepted because the opportunity to indulge in monologue to appreciative hearers was a keener pleasure to him than to write eloquent warnings to his day and generation. Froude's unhappy book, with a small library of commentary that it called forth, is practically forgotten, but Carlyle's fame and his ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... nauseous with the dank mucky odour that cooked out of the mangrove swamp. Rowelled by the squeaky music to recollection of old-world ports and places, Borckman lay on his face on the hot planking, beat a tattoo with his naked toes, and gutturally muttered an unending monologue of curses. But Van Horn, with Jerry panting under his hand, placidly and philosophically continued to smoke, lighting a fresh cigar ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... whisky and helped the two men in a liberal manner. He abused the teetotal sect with ferocity, as he handed the seltzer, and pouring out a glass of water for himself, was about to resume his monologue, when Cotgrave ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... my altruistic spirit. Besides, it is America's leading instrument, and those who excel upon it appeal to the patriotism which is never really dormant in us. Its close association with color in our civilization seemed to render it the fitting prelude of the next act, which consisted of 'Monologue and Songs' by a divine creature in lampblack, a shirt-waist worn outside his trousers, and an exaggerated development of stomach. What did he say, what did he sing? I don't know; I only know that it rested the soul and brain, that it soothed the conscience, and appeased the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... Chateau Vallencay, but the great man took no part in it. His role was lofty, mysterious, and grand. When he spoke all were silent, all attentive, all obsequious: but there was no conversation, in our sense of the word, and no dialogue, for there were no interlocutors. It was a monologue, in fact, and an interesting one—for his memory was deeply impressed with the recollections of the past, and he delighted to call them up, and to astonish his auditors by the freshness and vigor of his coloring: but, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... Coleridge, and the fact that as I listen to him I perfectly understand the marvelous gifts in this way of his father, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Again and again I have been held as if under a spell by the flowing stream of his delightful monologue. He had been the friend in boyhood of Macaulay, and almost the first published words of the afterward famous writer had appeared in conjunction with a like youthful effort of Derwent Coleridge. Mr. Coleridge has been the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... interesting conversation to which she had ever listened. From silence, the Premier passed to a remark here and there, thence to a conversation, thence, as the evening went on and they strolled further and further away from the house, into a monologue on his life and aims and hopes. Young man after young man sought her in vain, or, finding the pair, feared to intrude and retired in discontent, while Medland strove to draw the picture of that far-off society whose bringing-near was his goal ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope

... in her bed, and continued her monologue—which we will spare the reader—till the morning. Scarcely had the first rays of light filtered through the interlacing branches of jasmine and wavered into the room, when Nisida dressed herself hurriedly, and went as ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... crossed his threshold, where Ma'am Bougon was sweeping at the moment, as she uttered this memorable monologue:— ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... much of the little boy—petted him, sent in for special cakes to tempt him with, showered a host of questions on him about school and games and hobbies. Sir Francis exchanged views on weather, politics, and the coming cricket season with his guest. The latter subject mostly resolved itself into a monologue on the part of the baronet, since cricket held no more interest for Larssen than ninepins; but he listened with polite attention while Sir Francis expounded the chances of the Australian Team (he had been ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... bore, although some of those in the strictly university circles did at times become troublesomely learned in conversation. However, this was esteemed "old fogy-ism" by the younger men like Serviss, who alluded to "the days of the professional monologue" with smiling contempt. Conversation with them was a means of diversion, not of enlightenment as ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... displeasure, had missed the first shot. When he dragged himself out from under his deceased horse the scenery was undisturbed save for a small cloud of dust hovering over a distant rise to the north of him. After delivering a short and bitter monologue he struck out for the ranch and arrived in a very hot and wrathful condition. It was contagious, that condition, and before long the entire outfit was in the saddle and pounding north, Pete overjoyed because his wound was ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... table, hearing the same stale jokes or caustic remarks about Mrs. Atterson's food from Fred Crackit and the young men boarders of his class, or the grumbling of Mr. Peebles, the dyspeptic invalid, or the inane monologue of ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... feverish, diabolical, seductive in low-cut bodice pranked with flowers. It was a frenzy of impromptu extravagance, dazzling even the orchestra; each line accentuated by new gesture, the verses supplemented by new monologue; a miracle of chic and improvisation, and the house rose at it. Out of the mist before her eyes thunder seemed to come in great roars and crashes. She almost groped ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... the increase; I mean subjectivity. A writer commits this error when he thinks it enough if he himself knows what he means and wants to say, and takes no thought for the reader, who is left to get at the bottom of it as best he can. This is as though the author were holding a monologue; whereas, it ought to be a dialogue; and a dialogue, too, in which he must express himself all the more clearly inasmuch as he cannot hear ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer

... admire! She was amazed, stunned. She wondered how all this emotional richness could have been tapped. Had she left him too soon, or had her departure developed some richer artistic vein? She tortured her brain and heart. After a big tonal climax followed by the lugubrious monologue of a bassoon the ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... Addresses sent in to the Drury Lane Committee was one by Dr. Busby, entitled a Monologue, of which the Parody was enclosed in this letter. A short specimen of this trifle will be sufficient. The four first lines of the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... baskets of eels from Lake Copas; we shall all rush to buy them, disputing their possession with Morychus, Teleas, Glaucetes and every other glutton. Melanthius[362] will arrive on the market last of all; 'twill be, "no more eels, all sold!" and then he'll start a-groaning and exclaiming as in his monologue of Medea,[363] "I am dying, I am dying! Alas! I have let those hidden in the beet escape me!"[364] And won't we laugh? These are the wishes, mighty goddess, which we pray ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... told? And was he, Glaucon, son of Conon the Alcmaeonid, sitting there in the skiff alone with Sicinnus, to have a part therein, in a battle the fame whereof should ring through the ages? Bump, bump—still the monologue of the oars. A fish near by leaped from the water, splashing loudly. Then for an instant the clouds broke. Selene uncovered her face. The silvery flash quickly come, more quickly flying, showed him the headlands ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... a long monologue that was meant to bring distraction from the noise of the inferno. "I wish as 'ow we was a bit closer to the devils so that they couldn't shell us. I'd like to get me 'and round some blighter's ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett

... But the usher's brutal monologue came to an end; every one had arrived, and Gringoire breathed freely once more; the actors continued bravely. But Master Coppenole, the hosier, must needs rise of a sudden, and Gringoire was forced to listen to him deliver, amid universal ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... called upon a quiet little girl who had hardly been seen to open her mouth since she reached Harding, to make a speech. To every one's surprise she rose demurely, without a word of objection or the least appearance of embarrassment, and delivered an original monologue supposed to be spoken by a freshman newly arrived and airing her impressions of the college. It hit everybody with its absurd humor, which no one enjoyed better, apparently, than the quiet ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde

... a rambling monologue, while chewing a straw, he discussed humanity in general, and the professions in particular. "I ain't got no use fer lawyers—mighty hard show them fellers has, fer get'n' to heaven. As fer doctors—waal, they'll hev ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... of Thomas Carlyle he was beyond dispute the best talker in London, and a talker far more agreeable than either Carlyle or Macaulay, inasmuch as he was no less ready to listen than to speak, and never wearied the dinner-table by a monologue. His simplicity, his spontaneity, his genial courtesy, as well as the vast fund of knowledge and of personal recollections at his command, made him extremely popular in society, so that his opponents ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce

... may mention, lest any of my readers should be blessed with as strong a credulity as Mr. Boltay, that there was not one word of truth in the tragic monologue above described. Mrs. Meyer had not fallen out with her daughters; they had not turned her adrift; there was no need for her to leap into the Danube. The matter stood simply thus: Abellino, since his late rebuffs, had, full of passionate ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... for the names of several popular actors appeared on the program. But what made it especially attractive to Joe and his party was the fact that Nick Altman, the famous pitcher of the "White Sox" of Chicago, was on the bill for a monologue. Although, being in the American League, Joe and Jim had never played against him, they knew him well by reputation and respected him for his ability in their ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick

... called," continued the barber, with rising spirits at the prospect of a long monologue, as he imprisoned the young Greek in the shroud-like shaving-cloth; "mysteries of Minerva and the Graces. I get the flower of men's thoughts, because I seize them in the first moment after shaving. (Ah! you wince a little ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... ahead, squire," said Steve soothingly. "I know just how you feel, and I guess talking's not going to do any harm. Act as if I wasn't here. Look on it as a monologue. I don't ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... fanning out broader and broader as he approached. Suddenly two figures loomed up before him in the night. He came near and made out a barelegged boy, riding without a saddle and driving a cow before him. He was a very angry herdsman, this boy. He kept up a continual monologue directed at the cow and his horse, and so he did not hear the approach of Riley Sinclair until the outlaw was close upon him. Then he hitched himself around, with his hand on the hip of his old horse, swaying violently with the ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand

... true reverence for what were "sacred things." The churches were put to uses which would to-day be considered improper. Parodies and caricatures of ecclesiastical persons, institutions, and ritual called out no remonstrance. Mock sermons were a favorite form of monologue in a theatrical entertainment. In a morality produced late in the fifteenth century, called Les Blasphemateurs, the actors tortured and wounded the figure on a crucifix. The Virgin and two angels came down to catch in a cup the blood which miraculously flowed ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... parts to be restricted to one illustrative anecdote and one advisory monologue, neither to exceed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various

... upon the monologue. This recitation of his probable immunity from conviction on every count, far from reassuring him, served to confirm his original suspicion as to the reason for this arrest without witnesses. If the sheriff had ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts

... scholarship. Some critics called them vulgar, and they certainly were frivolous. But they proved two things—that Mr Steevens had a lively sense of humour, and that he had read the classics to some purpose. The monologue of Xanthippe—in which she gave her candid opinion of Socrates—was, in its way, and within its ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens

... if I can git wan iv them I'll be content—almost!' continued the little Irishman in his fierce monologue. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... The street which they had now entered, from the far end of the piazza, was narrow. It was encumbered by a string of laden mules, by a stream of foot passengers. Interruption of his monologue, short of raising her voice to screaming pitch, was impossible to Madame de Vallorbes. But when he ceased she addressed him, and her lips were drawn away from her ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... the attendant was thumping and kneading him on the slab, Tanno went on talking a cheerful monologue of frothy gossip. I asked him ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... K., who seems to regard conversation as largely a means of demonstrating her superiority, for she picks her subjects with the care a general selects his battlefield; F., who is a born pedagogue and seeks to instruct whoever listens to him, whose conversation is a lecture and a monologue; R. O., the reticent, says little but that pertinent and relevant, cynical and shrewd; and R. V., who says little and that with timidity and error. So there are specialists in caution and "common sense," self-controlled, never rash, calculating, cool and egotistic, narrow and successful. Every ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... by a greater profusion of poetry per se it will unravel the scheme of Cabell's fifteen essays in what might be called contrapuntal prose. It will unscramble all the rhymes screened in Manuel's monologue beginning on page 294, quote the metrical innovations with rhymed vowels on page 60, tabulate the hexameters that leap from the solidly set paragraphs and rearrange the brilliant fooling that opens the chapter "Magic of the Image Makers." ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... place where fungi were so common that, before a given evening two of them sprang up, only he, a stranger in this very fungiferous place, knew a fungus when he saw something like a fungus—if we disregard its quick liquefaction, for instance. It was only a monologue, however: now we have an all-star cast: and they're not only Irish; they're ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... though it is expressly stated to be uncommon.[93] There is now a marriage ceremony. Divorce still remains free, and the conditions are favourable for the wife. Jealousy is said to be prevalent both among the men and the women. The wedding monologue is interesting and indicates the relative position of the female and male members of the family. The salutation ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... way that writer talked. He talked so steadily nobody could slide a word in edgeways. Yet he said he wanted information. We wondered. If the ability to deliver an unending monologue, consisting chiefly of the ninth letter in the alphabet, is any sign of lung power, that chap didn't need any cod-liver oil or sea air. He could have given up writing, and still have made a good living ashore as a blacksmith's bellows! And as for the local color ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... and steadily until Arkwright's gaze dropped. Then he laughed friendly. "Come along, Grant," said he. "You're a good fellow, and I'll get you the girl." And he linked his arm in Arkwright's and took up another phase of himself as the topic of his monologue. ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... comment, or his jest, a pleasantry or a proverb. This was no longer exclusively a discussion of life on the colossal scale just described by Marcas, the soldier of political warfare. Nor was it the distressful monologue of the wrecked navigator, stranded in a garret in the Hotel Corneille; it was a dialogue in which two well-informed young men, having gauged the times they lived in, were endeavoring, under the guidance of a man of talent, to gain some light on ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac

... long features, heavy eyelids, a soldierly grey moustache. His body encased in a short black jacket with narrow sleeves, his long legs in very tight trousers, made up an agile, youthful, slender figure. He moved forward suddenly, and interrupted the mate's monologue. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... During this monologue the machine-agent was silent, a dark frown of indecision on his face. As for his wife, she looked as if she had bartered her child's birthright for something that had disagreed with her mental digestion. Jason Wrinkle, ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... little morsel on the ground continued his noisy monologue, protesting in a language which is of an age rather than of a race, against the cruelty and the thoughtlessness and the distressing lack of consideration which his elder and ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace

... during the War, talking to her commander. He was unravelling for me the shining complexity of his "box of tricks," as he called his ship. He was sardonic (there was no doubt he was master of the brute he so lightly villified), and he was blithe, and he illustrated his scientific monologue with stories of his own experiences in the Heligoland Bight. These, to me, were like the bedevilments of those dreams from which we groan to awake, but cannot. The curious doings of this new age, I thought as I listened to ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... of taverns of Fleet Street, "The Cock" most recently retained a semblance, at least, of its former characteristics, which recalls one of Tennyson's early poems, "A Monologue of Will Waterproof," which has truly immortalized ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... squeeze, as she went back to her seat, but after this Henrietta would hardly talk at all, and the reminiscences became a monologue from Evelyn. ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor

... monologue was intensified by hysteria. She pointed wildly, as if she saw again the awful sight which she had seen ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... of this Mr. Willmott was carrying on an equally impassioned but much slower monologue on his conception of the character of Cyrano de Bergerac, which he said he intended to produce. "Cyrano," he said, "has been maligned by Coquelin. Coquelin is a great artist, but he did not understand Cyrano. Cyrano is a dreamer, a poet; he is a martyr of thought like Tolstoi, a sacrifice ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring

... given. Miss Radford was asked to be so very kind as to assist by looking in the plate of nuts that stood on the table, and there the watch was discovered, safe and sound. Some thought-reading followed, not easy to understand because of the incessant monologue kept up by the gifted youth; but the results were satisfactory, and by pressing the folded pieces of paper very hard against his forehead, he was able to announce the ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge

... desired conversation, it seemed, or at least she desired an audience for a monologue, for she recognized no antiphonal obligations on the part of her listeners. The doctors were not doing her a speck of good, and she was just squandering money in a miserable boarding-house, when she might be enjoying poor health in her own home; and she did n't believe her ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... of a philosophic fatalist—"I will live for the day. I will live for the night." What an absurd patter that was on the lips of a woman. And she remembered the conversation with Fritz that had preceded her monologue. She had asked him then whether he could love her if her beauty were taken from her. It had never occurred to her that while her beauty still remained her spell upon him might be weakened, might be broken. That it was broken now she did not say to herself. All she did say to herself was ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... author of 'Typee,' etc. He lives in a spacious farmhouse about two miles from Pittsfield, a weary walk through the dust. But it as well repaid. I introduced myself as a Hawaiian-American, and soon found myself in full tide of talk, or rather of monologue. But he would not repeat the experiences of which I had been reading with rapture in his books. In vain I sought to hear of Typee and those paradise islands, but he preferred to pour forth his philosophy and his theories of life. The shade ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... others remaining back in the semi-darkness, they all heard Jack Jepson break into a sort of monologue. He was talking to himself, in ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope

... a powerful mind endowed with strong poetical sensitiveness. His work is even more poetical than musical. The suppression of the lyrical element, and therefore of melody, is with him a systematic parti pris. No more duos or trios; monologue and the aria are alike done away with. There remains only declamation, the recitative, and the choruses. In order to avoid the conventional in singing, Wagner falls into another convention,—that of not singing at all. He subordinates the voice to articulate speech, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... the habit of going a little earlier, and Barter would signal him to the table at which he sat, if by rare chance there happened to be a vacant seat at it. The young rascal's tendency lay towards monologue, and since it was his cue to be open-hearted, and very unsuspicious of being suspected, he talked with much freedom of himself, his pursuits, and his affairs. The question which Barter's nerves were always finding in Philip's eyes was, as a matter of fact, ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... dogs the more amazin' marvellous they are to me," Dag Daughtry, after he had compassed his fourth bottle, confided in monologue to the Shortlands planter that night just before bedtime. "Take Killeny Boy. He don't do things for me mechanically, just because he's learned to do 'm. There's more to it. He does 'm because he likes me. I can't give you the hang of it, but I ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... halfhours could have shown themselves to him then, he would have fled from the mere horror of billions. Alas! he considered his sufferings a new invention in the world, and there was now inspired in his breast a monologue so eloquently bitter that it might deserve some such title as A Passion Beside the Smoke-house. During the little time that William spent in this sequestration he passed through phases of emotion which would have kept an older man busy for weeks ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... second time. Letter from George W. Curtis while in Europe. Sophia expresses in a letter to Hawthorne her entire satisfaction, though poor and in the midst of petty cares, under his enchanting protection. Daniel Webster's oration in Salem. Alcott's monologue. Thoreau's lecture. Letters about the attack of certain mistaken people upon Hawthorne as a Democrat and official. Hawthorne writes to Horace Mann upon the subject. The best citizens are active to remedy the offense against ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... plumb-full of book dope on the Yukon. He's Mister Wise Mike. He knows it all. Hear his monologue on 'How It Should Be Done.' He's going to live on deck to inure himself to the rigours of the Arctic climate. Works with a pair of spring dumb-bells to get up his muscle so's he can shovel ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... have spared myself the jest; he gave it no attention, but seated himself in the chair that he had left and resumed the interrupted monologue as if nothing ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... got to stop. I got to do something." He felt her monologue as a blank steel wall which he could not pierce. Aloud: "Yes, that's so, I guess. Say, that's a fine dress Gertie 's got on to-night, ain't it.... Say, I been learning to play crokinole at Ben Rusk's. You got a board, haven't you? Would ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... which he could not quite conceal. I thought it proper to state in the outset that I wished simply to know whatever he was free to tell me in regard to his own willingness or unwillingness to accept a renomination. The reply was a monologue of an hour's duration, and one that wholly absorbed me, as it seemed to absorb himself. He remained seated nearly all the time. He was restless, often changing position, and occasionally, in some intense moment, wheeling his body around in his chair ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... proceeded to take off his cloak and lay it, with his hat and sword, on a chair in one corner, after which he deliberately rearranged his luxuriant ringlets in front of a Venetian mirror, and then, assuming his most graceful and telling pose, began pouring forth in dulcet tones the following monologue: "But where, oh! where, is the divinity of this Paradise? Here is the temple indeed, but I see not the goddess. When, oh! when, will she deign to emerge from the cloud that veils her perfect form, and reveal herself to the adoring eyes, that wait ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... him the family portraits leaned against the wall. The lamp on the table shed a weak light over the boarded floor, muddied by the feet of the van-men. Stephen sat on a footstool beside his father listening to a long and incoherent monologue. He understood little or nothing of it at first but he became slowly aware that his father had enemies and that some fight was going to take place. He felt, too, that he was being enlisted for the fight, that some duty was being laid upon his shoulders. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... out of his embarrassment by an occasional 'Ay, mun,' interjected into his apologetic and cordial monologue; and so we reached the hut, where, after directing me to a seat, he filled a billy with some of the water he had brought, and hung it on ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... James invited to the wedding banquet three thousand of the most noted men and women of the world and informed his guests that at the conclusion of the feast the most wonderful dramatic artist of the age—William Shakspere, would recite in monologue from his own plays rare bits of ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... "fundamental brain power," insight, beauty, and mastery of style, these poems show Browning at the highest level of his poetic achievement. It is in these remarkable poems that he brought to perfection a poetic form which he practically invented, the dramatic monologue, a form in which there is but one speaker but which is essentially dramatic in effect. The dramatic quality arises partly from the implied presence of listeners whose expressions of assent or dissent determine the progress or the abrupt ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... for no one. They stormed Convention yesterday and looted the cellar of Good-Manners, who died of fear without a wound; so they drank his wine and are to-day as strong as lions and as careless (saving only their Captain, Monologue, who is lantern-jawed). ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... (remember) remains to be considered—that is a different side of the subject. If I do, it may be in a magazine—or—but this is another ground. And then, I have in my head to associate with the version, a monodrama of my own,—not a long poem, but a monologue of AEschylus as he sate a blind exile on the flats of Sicily and recounted the past to his own soul, just before the eagle cracked his great ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... and tea and sugar, you could not do better by way of forestalling starvation and repentance. Every day I stopped once or twice at a travelers' bungalow, or rest-house; and I managed, notwithstanding that my stock of Urdu was scanty, to make my wants understood. That a great part of the copious monologue which my purveyors expended, as we settled the details of breakfast or dinner, was lost on me, did not seem, in the final result, to matter in the least. What I needed I asked for, and then listened attentively for the barbaric representative ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... some of them on the wire with all the stuff we had over!" went on with his monologue the knight of the collapsed romance, who, not being troubled with fine sensibilities, had no idea of the feelings under ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer

... censure in former times, and may not incur it now. The privilege of expressing his own thoughts, sufferings, sympathies, in any form of verse is easily conceded to him; if he liked to use a dialogue instead of a monologue, for the purpose of enforcing a duty, or illustrating a doctrine, no one would find fault with him; if he produced an actual Drama for the purpose of defending or denouncing a particular character, or period, or system of opinions, the compliments ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... adjacent tables might have noticed the young man continually addressing the empty chair and carrying on a monologue with it throughout ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... and so the workmen implicated in these defacings were denied what unquestionably; they would have considered a treat; but as the fanatic orator continued the monologue, a gentleman in flannels emerged upward from one of the excavations, and ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... last, with bashful manifestations, like those of a young girl, almost—words that gasped themselves forth, seeming to leave a great deal more behind them than they told, and died out discontented with themselves, like the monologue of thunder in the sky, which always goes off mumbling and grumbling as if it had not said half it wanted to, and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... minute was needed for his world travel in beautiful fantastic pictures; and yet we lived through all the boy's hopes and ecstasies with him. If we had seen the young sailor in his hammock on the theater stage, he might have hinted to us whatever passed through his mind by a kind of monologue or by some enthusiastic speech to a friend. But then we should have seen before our inner eye only that which the names of foreign places awake in ourselves. We should not really have seen the wonders of the world through the eyes of his soul and with the glow of his hope. The drama ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg

... over the table and took up a cigarette. Lighting it, he dropped the match and resumed his monologue. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... had he himself realized what a stray he had become from his pastor's flock and fold. And he felt that he ought instantly to tell the pastor this was the case. But the pastor had reseated himself and regripped his masterful monologue. The lad was more than embarrassed; he felt conscious of a new remorseful tenderness for this grim, righteous man, now that he had emancipated mind and conscience from his teaching: so true it often is that affection is possible ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... well, that you are sure to reap the penalty of it. Forbear, I warn you, before it is too late. I know of what I speak. I have been a gentleman for years, and I am acquainted with all the ins and outs of the calling. It is a poor one; avoid it. But you will pardon this somewhat lengthy monologue. I have kept you from ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... said Harry, taking a seat next the person he addressed, which movement he accomplished during an immense row occasioned by Mr. Frampton, 387 who was grunting forth a mixed monologue of explanations and apologies to Sir John, by whom they were received with such a hearty fit of laughing that the tears ran down his cheeks—"My dear Lawless, the kind and generous way in which you take this matter makes me ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... monologue—a very small part—was Old Dalton's own, repeated over and over, and so kept in mind ever since the more initiative years a decade ago when he first began to think about his age. Another part of the utterance—more particularly that about "movin' ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... belonged essentially to the festivals in honour of the god Dionysus; being originally a chorus sung in his honour, to which were successively superadded: First, an iambic monologue; next, a dialogue with two actors; lastly, a regular plot with three actors, and a chorus itself interwoven into the scene. Its subjects were from the beginning, and always continued to be, persons either divine or heroic above the level of historical life, and borrowed from what ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith

... I think I may say the entire evening, was occupied by a monologue addressed by the poet to my mother, who was of course extremely well pleased to listen to it. I was chiefly occupied in talking to my old schoolfellow, Herbert Hill, Southey's nephew, who also passed the evening there, and with whom I had a delightful walk the next day. ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... time to time she halted her preparations and sat down opposite her visitors, less for the moments repose than to give some special emphasis to what she was about to say; but the washing of a dish or the setting of the table speedily claimed her attention again, and the monologue went on amid the clatter of ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon



Words linked to "Monologue" :   oral communication, voice communication, words, spoken language, monologuize, spoken communication, speech, speech communication, actor's line, monologist, language, soliloquy



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