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Gulliver’s Travels vocabulary
9 famous people mentioned
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Demosthenes
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tags: [personage]
► definition
Definition:Athenian orator from around 350 BCE, described as "a large and overflowing fountain of genius""
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Uses:
Imagine with thyself, courteous reader, how often I then wished for the tongue of Demosthenes or Cicero, that might have enabled me to celebrate the praise of my own dear native country in a style equal to its merits and felicity.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels Into Several Remote Regions of the World (1726)
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Doremus had never heard Windrip during one of his orgasms of oratory, but he had been told by political reporters that under the spell you thought Windrip was Plato, but that on the way home you could not remember anything he had said.
There were two things, they told Doremus, that distinguished this prairie Demosthenes. He was an actor of genius. There was no more overwhelming actor on the stage, in the motion pictures, nor even in the pulpit.
Sinclair Lewis. It Can't Happen Here
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“Demosthenes, I know thee by the pebble thou secretest in thy golden mouth!” said Bilibin, and the mop of hair on his head moved with satisfaction.
Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace: With bonus material from Give War and Peace A Chance by Andrew D. Kaufman
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One of these he maintained to be the head of Cicero; the other he imagined a composite one, being Demosthenes' from the top of the forehead to the mouth, and Lord Brougham's from the mouth to the chin. It is not impossible that he was wrong; but he would have convinced you of his being in the right; for he was a man of great eloquence.
Edgar Allan Poe. The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4: The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether (1845)
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