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More "Brevity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well as of Latin literature, able to discourse with the ambassadors of Constantinople in well-turned Attic sentences, or to deliver a stately Latin oration to the messengers of the Senate, she could also, when the occasion required brevity, wrap herself in the robe of taciturnity which she inherited from her Teutonic ancestors, and with few, diplomatically chosen words, make the hearer feel his immeasurable inferiority to the "Lady of the Kingdoms". A woman with a ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... piercing than is commonly found in eyes of that colour. They had been clear and keen, and expressive of an active, vigorous brain behind them. At present they were wandering, weak and watery, altogether lacking in lustre or expression. They told their sad tale with piteous brevity. The brain was active and vigorous no longer, or, if still active, was so to no definite purpose. The spark of reason was for the time quenched within him. His oratory and his writings were no longer to be dreaded. The man whose large presence had once carried about with it unmistakable evidences ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... simplicity and brevity of the scriptural account and of its paucity of incidental details, is the mass of circumstance supplied by the imagination of men, much of which is wholly unsupported by authoritative record and ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... score, have been much of a philosopher; but he handles a philosophical thought in verse with a dexterity that is entirely his own. The sharpness and swiftness of intellectual power concurring in him, join so much ease with so much brevity, that the poetical vein flows on unhindered, even when involved with metaphysical notions and with scholastic recollections. The comparison of the following noble strain with the original now quoted, decisively and successfully shows the character of an embellishing transformation, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... having finished her description, enumerates, as was meet, the peculiarities, and, I might say, dogmatic tendencies, of the hero of the tail, Herr Dog! [He (not H.D., but the Author) says "Old Mother HUBBARD."] Here is simplicity for you! Here is brevity! "Old Mother HUBBARD!" How sweetly it sounds; how nicely the words fit each other! What an immense range of thought he must have who first said "Old Mother HUBBARD." Less gifted authors of the present would rejoice exceedingly, could they do likewise. Ah!—and a spark of enthusiasm ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... know the views can catch them. To add to these difficulties the Sanskrit style of most of the commentaries is so condensed and different from literary Sanskrit, and aims so much at precision and brevity, leading to the use of technical words current in the diverse systems, that a study of these becomes often impossible without the aid of an expert preceptor; it is difficult therefore for all who are not widely read in all the different systems to ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... added on the subject of the piracies committed by this seriff; and it could easily be shown that the evils accruing from them affect, not only the peaceful trader, but extend to the peaceful agriculturist; but, for the sake of brevity, I deem it sufficient to add, that he exercises the same malign influence on the north coast as Seriff Sahib exercised on the northwest; and that, having surrounded himself by a body of pirates, he arrogates the rights of sovereignty, defies European power, contemns ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... while he was going through the formalities of the commitment, Prosper replied with haughty brevity to the indispensable questions ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... brevity, this autobiography has doubtless been a greater incentive to ambitious boys than any other. It is perhaps worth noting that a prominent Japanese merchant of Boston, when a boy in his native land, after reading the book, determined to seek his fortune in Franklin's country, and testifies ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... speech—this evidence of sincerity in every word—with the almost boyish beauty of his face, bound his distinguished audience as with a magic spell. When, at the conclusion of the speech, Mr. Webster left the hall, he remarked to a friend, with his comprehensive brevity, "Nobody ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... they need to find Him at all, seems not to comprehend this passion of pride and humility, this inner perception of the futility and the blunder of the self-contained life. Life is so obviously not worth its brevity, its suffering, its withheld conclusions, its relative insignificance, if it must thus stand alone. All that can save it, preserve to it worth and dignity, maintain its self-respect and mastery, is to find that ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... close vicinity of royalty. He behaved certainly very much better than he would have done had he had no weight at his heart. He made few attempts at beginning any conversation, and answered, at any rate with brevity, when he was addressed. With scrupulous care he ticked off on his memory the names of those who had come and whom he knew, thinking that their presence indicated a verdict of acquittal from them on the evidence ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... are. It was impossible to be five minutes in her company without being affected by her domination. Her very clothes felt it, for not a rebellious wrinkle or crease dared to show itself. The nurses came to her almost every moment for directions, which were given with brevity and clearness, and obeyed with the utmost deference. The furniture was like that of a yacht, very compact, scrupulously clean, and very handy. There was a complete apparatus for instantaneously making tea, a luxurious little armchair specially made ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... inquiries to our own country, and generally to recent times; for researches more curious, and eras more distant, would less forcibly act on our sympathy. If, in attempting to avoid the naked brevity of Valerianus, I have taken a more comprehensive view of several of our Authors, it has been with the hope that I was throwing a new light on their characters, or contributing some fresh materials to our literary history. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... for justice resounded at the palace gates. This Prince was an impartial chief magistrate; he prided himself upon his "invariable" principles of justice, and he allowed nothing to influence his decisions. His plan for arranging all differences had the merit of being brief; and if brevity be the soul of wit, it certainly was most unreasonable in his subjects to consider his judgments no joke. He always counted the quarterings in the shields of the respective parties, and decided accordingly. Imagine the speedy redress gained by a muddy-veined ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... me about him, for in these times it is as well they should draw together. He will be a match for Brougham in the House of Lords, for he can be concise, which the other cannot, and the Lords in the long run will prefer brevity to art, sarcasm, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... shades and gradations in the sources the reviser had at command. In the Books of Kings for the first time we meet with a series of short notices which arrest attention, in the surroundings they are in, by their brevity and directness of statement and the terseness of their form, and have the semblance of contemporary records. In spite of their looseness of arrangement these form the real basis of our connected knowledge of the period; and the religious chronological ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... any summons to Parliament, that of the Fitz Osberts: and On MY Mother's side it has mounted the Lord knows whither by the Philipps,s to Henry VIII. and has sucked in Dryden for a great-uncle: and by Lady Philipps's mother, Darcy, to Edward III. and there I stop for brevity's sake—especially as Edward III. is a second Adam; who almost is not descended from Edward 1 as posterity will be from Charles II. and all the princes in Europe from James I. I am the first antiquary of my race. People don't know how entertaining a study it is. Who begot whom ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... then came the message: "This is the Tuileries. You have my authority to use the Morse code for the sake of brevity. Do you understand? I am Jarras. The Empress is here." Instantly reassured by the message from Colonel Jarras, head of the bureau to which I was attached, I answered that I understood. Then the telegrams began to fly, all in the ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... truth, the show languished. Nothing but the happy acquisition of a Chinese giant nearly eight feet high, with slanting eyes and a long pigtail,—a man who did penance in his height for the undue brevity of his undersized nation,—would have ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... this, and he proceeded to say that no further instructions had been received on the subject of our disposal, and this being so he was about to start to interview "She-who-must-be-obeyed," generally spoken of, for the sake of brevity, as "Hiya" or She simply, who he gave us to understand was the Queen of the Amahagger, and ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... and business; and such basic institutions as the family, the state, and society go back even further, past our earliest records, until their origins are shrouded in deepest mystery. Despite its brevity, modern history is of supreme importance. Within its comparatively brief limits are set greater changes in human life and action than are to be found in the records of any earlier millennium. While the present ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... certainly a competent judge of oratory, says of Lincoln as an orator: "Brevity is the soul of wit, and a part of Lincoln's reputation for wit lies in his ability to condense a great deal into a few words. He was epigrammatic. His Gettysburg speech is the world's model in eloquence, elegance, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... in my classes lessons in "how to tell a story" with ease, brevity, and point, promising to give an anecdote of my own suggested by theirs every time. This pleased them, and we had a jolly time. The first girl who tried ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... former capitan; my distinguished friend, Don Valentin, a former capitan; the friend of my infancy, Don Julio; our celebrated captain of cuadrilleros, Don Melchor; and many other personages, whom, for the sake of brevity, I must omit to enumerate—all of whom you see present here. I beg of you that I may be allowed a few words before any one else speaks. Have I the good fortune to see my humble request ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... all their faults, have great merits. His principal works, which are of a philosophical character, are essays "On Anger," "On Consolation," "On Providence," "On Tranquillity of Mind," "On the Firmness of the Wise Man," "On Clemency," "On the Brevity of Human Life," "On a Happy Life," etc., together with "Epistles of Lucilius," one hundred and twenty-four in number. Besides these, there are extant ten tragedies attributed to him, entitled, Hercules Furens, Thyestes, Thebais or Phoenissae, Hippolytus or Phaedra, Oedipus, Troades ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... sometimes indelicate—it would give offense, subscribers would cancel, et cetera. To get my thoughts published I had to publish them myself; and people bought for the very reason for which the editors said they would cancel. The readers wanted brevity and plain ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... can here supply the brevity of the historian, and report the whole of what the apostle said to Felix on these important points? It seems to me that I hear him enforcing those important truths he has left us in his works, and placing in the fullest luster those ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... as it is written, "Why have ye conspired to tempt the Spirit of God?" I saw, on the other hand, how much security had grown upon the men of our time, as if there were nothing to cause them fear. These things, therefore, and many more which for brevity's sake we have determined to omit, I revolved again and again in my amazed mind with compunction in my heart, and I thought to myself, "If God's peculiar people, chosen from all the people of the world, the royal seed, and holy nation, to whom he had said, 'My first begotten Israel,' ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... to me, and I feel as if I had spent the last half-hour in a magnificent sepulcher. Yes, it is a tomb in which hope, joy and the power of acting nobly lie buried. Every beautiful description, every deep thought glides insensibly into the same mournful chant of the brevity of life, of the slow decay and dissolution of all earthly things. The poet's bright, fond memories of love, youth and beauty are but the funeral torches shedding their light on this tomb, or to modify the image a little, they are the flowers ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... in 1751. He had 'an escort of the Aga of Hassia's best Arab horsemen.' Johnson was perhaps astonished at the size of their caravan, 'which was increased to about 200 persons.' The writer treats the whole matter with great brevity. Wood's Ruins of Palmyra, p. 33. On their return the travellers discovered a party of Arab horsemen, who gave them an alarm. Happily these Arabs were still more afraid of them, and were at once plundered by the escort, 'who laughed at our remonstrances ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... and which are no less beautiful because they consist largely of ideas culled from the Greek philosopher Theophrastus. In all his poems, however, Jonson aims consistently at the classical virtues of clearness, brevity, proportion, finish, and elimination of ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... in its motive, though the composer has been charged with taking it from "La Femme de Tabarin," by the French novelist, Catulle Mendes. Be this as it may, Leoncavallo's version has the merit of brevity, conciseness, ingenuity, and swift action, closing in a denouement of great tragic power and capable, in the hands of a good actor, of being made very effective. The composer has not alone been charged with borrowing the story, but also with plagiarizing the music. So far ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... the public eye. The Express announced it in a burst of beaming headlines, with a biographical sketch and a "cut" of its young fellow-townsman. Horace Williams, whose hand was plain in every line apologized for the brevity of the biography—quality rather than quantity, he said; it was all good, and time would make it better. This did not prevent the Mercury observing the next evening that the Liberal organ had omitted ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... a perfect gem of Greek art; even in the English Version it loses little, if anything, of its literary charm. As a prologue it is regarded as unsurpassed for brevity, modesty, and dignity. However, its value lies not in its beauty but in its testimony to the veracity of the writer and to the historic worth and absolute credibility of the gospel story. The fact of inspiration should not blind us to the human means by which the Spirit ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... being brevity, I shall bring forward a little of what the learned have said of the causes of twins, and whether there be any such things as superfoetations, or a second conception in a woman (which is yet common enough), and as to twins, I shall have occasion to speak of them when I come to show you how the ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... gray walls rose to the height of eight stories. Such was the headquarters, from an external aspect, of one of the oldest, safest, and best of local companies, which invariably, for brevity, was known to friends and foes alike as ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... described in a few phrases, so the cessation of the flood may have been dismissed with equal brevity; the gradual abatement of the waters, as attested by the dove, the swallow, and the raven, may well be due to later elaboration or to combination with some variant account. Under its amended form the narrative leads naturally up to the landing on the mountain and the ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... Accustomed to the military brevity and promptitude exacted by his commander in all communications addressed to him by his inferiors, Hermanric, without waiting to be interrogated or attempting to preface or excuse his narrative, shortly related the conversation that had taken place between the stranger ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... and place; it presents a less extensive view of life, with (most frequently) a more intensive art. But these differences are not definite enough to warrant its being considered a species distinct from the novel. Except for the restrictions imposed by brevity of compass, the writer of novelettes employs the same methods as the writer of novels; and, furthermore, ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... for the Belmont Factory—for the light of that busy wax-candle making. Turn we now to the Night-Light Factory, though our notice of this must be brief; but brevity ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... hint, that among the multitude of things, which for brevity sake I omit, the Reader may observe these ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... For the sake of brevity, we shall, as far as possible, exclude from our present inquiry those prophecies pertaining to civil and political affairs, retaining only such as have an important bearing on ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... which was now in Mr Jedwood's hands had perhaps more merit than 'Margaret Home'; its brevity, and the fact that nothing more was aimed at than a concatenation of brisk events, made it not unreadable. But Reardon thought of it with humiliation. If it were published as his next work it would afford final proof to such sympathetic readers as he might ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... Instantly he rose, fixed her with a comprehending look, nodded almost imperceptibly toward the chair he was vacating, and returned to his seat inside the car. Her fine brows lifted a trifle; her slight inclination of the head was robbed of the chill of brevity by a fleeting smile of gratitude, not so much for the sacrifice of his seat in her favor as for the fine courtesy which had moved him to proffer it without making of his action an excuse to sit beside her and ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... correct; but all the developing, before and after, unfortunately confounds the perpendicular with the vertical—a bad way toward future accuracy of thought, or toward making scientific ideas, as they should be, definite as well as practically useful. If we judge by the brevity and incompleteness of the lesson on 'Developing ideas of Drawing'(!), ideas of that particular 'stripe' must be scarce. The Object Lessons at the close of the book we find generally very good models of such exercises, clear and to the purpose. Once in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... campaign, he had all his calculations ready; those generals who made use of them did not lose one battle in ten; those who ran counter to them in any particular saw their armies incontinently beaten and put to flight." Ts'ao Kung's notes on Sun Tzu, models of austere brevity, are so thoroughly characteristic of the stern commander known to history, that it is hard indeed to conceive of them as the work of a mere LITTERATEUR. Sometimes, indeed, owing to extreme compression, they are scarcely intelligible ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... use brevity, and avoid much labouring of the work, is to be granted to him that will make ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... it have any close relation with the other parts, of his discourse; it was simply a digression, and, to my mind, a very delightful one. He began about the restrictions to which we are all more or less subject, the aspirations that are never destined to be fulfilled, but are mocked by life's brevity. And it was at this point that—probably thinking of his own case—he branched off into the subject of genius; and proceeded to show that a man possessing that divine quality finds existence a much sadder affair than the ordinary man; the reason being that his aspirations are so much loftier ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... their note, not less than strikingly genial, but with vaguenesses, lapses, eclipses, that deprived their society of a tactless weight. They cheered us on, in their way; born optimists, clearly, if not logically determined ones, they were always reassuring and sustaining, though with a bright brevity that must have taken immensities, I think, for granted. They wore their hats slightly toward the nose, they strolled, they hung about, they reported of progress and of the company, they dropped suggestions, new magazines, packets of the edible ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... thou hadst attained to the years and passed through all the desolate bereavements that chilled and scared myself ere my researches had made it mine, thou wouldest have escaped the curse of which thou complainest now. Thou wouldest not have mourned over the brevity of human affection as compared to the duration of thine own existence, for thou wouldest have survived the very desire and dream of the love of woman. Brightest, and but for that error perhaps the loftiest, of the ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Such abrupt brevity of expression, not uncommon among Norwegian peasants, was no doubt natural to Bjrnson, but was confirmed by the influence of the Old Norse sagas and skaldic poetry. The latter may also have increased his use of ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... speak of "appearances," I do so only for brevity: I do not mean anything that must "appear" to somebody, but only that happening, whatever it may be, which is connected, at the place in question, with a given physical object—according to the old orthodox theory, it would be a transverse vibration ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... Walsingham" is mentioned as a musical composition in Ward's Lives of the Professors of Gresham College. See also Burney's Hist. of Music, iii. p. 111. When people employed this form of adjuration, as was formerly very common, they were said, for brevity's sake, "to swear Walsingham." In the play of The Weakest Goeth to the Wall, 1600, 4to. Barnaby Bunch ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... Mordaunt returned with brevity. "And you are not to say it again. Also, I must ask you to bear in mind that when I say a thing I mean it—invariably. I've had more than enough disobedience from ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... aversion to these callings by a dislike to steady application, and to that kind of acquirement which is needful instrumentally, but is not charming or immediately inviting to self-indulgent taste. I have insisted to him on what Aristotle has stated with admirable brevity, that for the achievement of any work regarded as an end there must be a prior exercise of many energies or acquired facilities of a secondary order, demanding patience. I have pointed to my own manuscript volumes, which represent the toil of years preparatory ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... is of interest: "For the rest, he talked well in his way; with veracity, easy brevity, and force, as a wise tradesman would of his tools and workshop, and as no unwise one could. His voice was good, frank, and sonorous, though practically clear, distinct, and forcible, rather than melodious; the tone of him, ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... random, among the multitudes of similar facts which modern research has established; but when the student seeks for an explanation of them from the supporters of the received hypothesis of the origin of species, the reply he receives is, in substance, of Oriental simplicity and brevity—"Mashallah! it so pleases God!" There are different species on opposite sides of the isthmus of Panama, because they were created different on the two sides. The pliocene mammals are like the existing ones, because such was the plan of creation; and we find ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... terms which will be used, must here be given. With seedlings, the stem which supports the cotyledons (i.e. the organs which represent the first leaves) has been called by many botanists the hypocotyledonous stem, but for brevity sake we will speak of it merely as the hypocotyl: the stem immediately above the cotyledons will be called the epicotyl or plumule. The radicle can be distinguished from the hypocotyl only by the presence of root-hairs and the nature of its ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... in my mother's language. My story can be advanced in no better way than by translating freely from the original Dutch document, which I still have, and which shows, if nothing else, that Dame Mauverensen had powers of directness and brevity of statement not inherited by ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... that his adopted son, Mototsune, carried it out. A halo rests on Seiwa's head for the sake of his memorable descendants, the Minamoto chiefs, Yoritomo, Takauji, and Ieyasu. Heaven is supposed to have compensated the brevity of his own tenure of power by the overwhelming share that his posterity enjoyed in ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... philosophy of youth, ardent, but narrow in its survey—sincere, but apt to become one-sided, or even fanatical. It is one of those subjective and partial ideals, based on vivid, because limited, apprehension of the truth of one aspect of experience (in this case, of the beauty of the world and the brevity of man's life there) which it may be said to be the special vocation of the young to express. In the school of Cyrene, in that comparatively fresh Greek world, we see this philosophy where it is least blase, as we say; in its most pleasant, its blithest and yet perhaps its wisest form, youthfully ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... evening after dinner, the two old gentlemen - no one else being present but myself - sitting in armchairs over the fire, finishing their bottle of port, Lord Lynedoch told the wonderful story of his adventures during the siege of Mantua by the French, in 1796. For brevity's sake, it were better perhaps to give the outline in the words of Alison. 'It was high time the Imperialists should advance to the relief of this fortress, which was now reduced to the last extremity from want of provisions. At a council of war held in the end of December, it was decided ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... the same glance it seemed to take in equally the farthest and the nearest; only over us in the boat it passed always as over vacant space. Yet any question was answered at once with quiet, willing brevity, not as if he had been interrupted in his thoughts, or was recalled to a recognition of our existence, but just as he would turn the tiller in steering his boat,—while the eye still continued its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... interest to his rambles in search of health, to know that he may, at any moment, pick up a boulder which has travelled further, and passed through more strange vicissitudes, than he can well have done himself; perhaps, with Shakespeare, to read “Sermons in Stones,” and to moralise on the brevity of human life, with all its ailments, compared with those ages untold, through which the pebble in his hand slowly {91c} travelled on its long, laborious journey, to rest at length as a constituent element of the locality, where he himself ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... few days afterwards, I had an interview with Isturitz at the palace, and for the sake of brevity I shall content myself with saying that I found him perfectly well disposed to favour my views. "I have lived long in England," said he; "the Bible is free there, and I see no reason why it should not be free ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Rogers's voice was always rather sepulchral, and his enunciation unusually deliberate and monotonous, he had nevertheless, as Locker says, "made story-telling a fine art." Continued practice had given him the utmost economy of words; and as far as brevity and point are concerned, his method left nothing to be desired. Many of his best efforts are still to be found in the volume of Table-Talk edited for Moxon in 1856 by the Rev. Alexander Dyce; or preferably, as actually written down by Rogers himself in the delightful ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... in no way resented the League; he brushed it aside as of no account. And, indeed, it was not aimed at him personally, nor at his wife personally, but at the great mass of thought—or of incoherent, muddled emotion that passed for thought—which the Anti-Potters had agreed, for brevity's sake, to call 'Potterism.' Potterism had very certainly not been created by the Potters, and was indeed no better represented by the goods with which they supplied the market than by those of many others; but it was a handy name, and it had taken ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... losses and tempting offers induced her in 1849 to reappear in public. In Warsaw she gave a first series of five or six concerts in the course of a week, went then by invitation of the King of Prussia to Fischbach, and from there returned to Warsaw. Her concerts were remarkable for their brevity. She usually sang at them four times, and between her performances the orchestra played some pieces. She dispensed altogether with the assistance of other virtuosos. But Chopin remarks that so great was the impression she ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... events in this period of schism may be dispatched with a brevity out of all proportion to their importance, on account of the simplicity of motive and action by which ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... knowledge of human affairs, precision can only be obtained by attention to characteristic details, for these alone enable us to understand how one fact differed from others, and what there was in it peculiar to itself. There is thus a conflict between the need of brevity, which leads us to look for concrete formulae, and the necessity of being precise, which requires us to adopt detailed formulae. Formulae which are too short make science vague and illusory, formulae which are too long encumber it and make it ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... acquainted[88] at Heidelberg during the winter of 1807-8. This, of course, is not to say that Heine borrowed from Loeben. Indeed, one of the strongest proofs that Heine borrowed from Schreiber rather than from Loeben is the clarity and brevity, ease and poetry of Schreiber's saga as over against the obscurity and diffuseness, clumsiness and woodenness of Loeben's saga,[89] the plot of which, so far as the action is concerned, is as follows: ...
— Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei • Allen Wilson Porterfield
... of scenario elaboration MUST NOT lead to over-expansion. Brevity and conciseness are not necessarily one, any more than are fullness and prolixity. Be concise—cut close to the line; having started your action by setting forth a basic incident at once interesting and plausible, keep the wheels of your story in ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... it will be often well to admit the license of using a substantive for epithet, (as one says rock-bird or sea-bird, and not 'rocky,' or 'marine,') in Latin as well as in English. We thus greatly increase our power, and assist the brevity of nomenclature; and we gain the convenience of using the second term by itself, when we wish to do so, more naturally. Thus, one may shortly speak of 'The Sagitta' (when one is on a scientific point where 'Swift' would be indecorous!) more ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... object of which is to make the reader easily acquainted with the actual defect of the language in this particular, does not pretend to be complete or scientific; and in the identification of doubtful words the clue was dictated by brevity. s., v., and adj. mean substantive, verb, and adjective. The sections were made to aid ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... The two other figures, both clad in dark gray, showed the sobriety of Deacons; one was ridiculously tall and thin, like a man of ordinary bulk infinitely produced, as the mathematicians say; while the brevity and thickness of his colleague seemed a compression of the same man. These four talked with great earnestness, and their gestures intimated that they had revived the ancient dispute about the meeting- house steeple. The grave person in ...
— An Old Woman's Tale - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with a tale, appended, as make-weight, to the final volume of the "Gentilhomme Campagnard", and whose brevity recommends it for extraction. It is too short and slight to be a fair specimen of M. de Bernard's powers, but, as far as it goes, it is as witty and amusing as any thing he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... undersigned have examined Covell's Digest of English Grammar, and are of opinion that in the justness of its general views, the excellence of its style, the brevity, accuracy, and perspicuity of its definitions and rules, the numerous examples and illustrations, the adaptation of its synthetical exercises, the simplicity of its method of analysis, and in the plan of its arrangement, this work surpasses any other Grammar ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... Mr. POLLOCK:—Brevity is always a virtue. I intend to practice that virtue now. I would not make a single observation, if I did not feel that by keeping silence I should neglect my duty. As it is, I do not intend to occupy the time of the ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... among other things should be applied to them. In the cure of old fistulous tracts near the teeth he employs not only this Egyptian ointment but also arsenic and corrosive sublimate. What he has to say with regard to the filling of the teeth is, however, most important. He says it with extreme brevity, but with the manner of a man thoroughly accustomed to doing it. "By means of a drill or file the putrefied or corroded part of the tooth should be completely removed. The cavity left should then be filled with gold leaf." It is evident that the members of the Papal court, the Cardinals and the ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... with his accustomed brevity, but there was much more than usual in his letter. He saw no prospect, so he told her, of being able to leave the country for some time to come. Affairs were unsettled, and likely to remain so. At the same time, there was no reason, now that her health was restored, that she should not ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... pilled, in other cases as might be shown by quotations, which for the sake of brevity I omit, means pillaged, robbed, and also peeled, of which last sense the quotations above given seem only to be a figurative application. The difficulties which arise from these explanations are, first, if bald be the true meaning, why must we, with Todd, limit it to baldness, resulting ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... inside this cabin will be banished to the smoke-house to live by himself. I mean every word I say!" With hang-dog looks the culprits turned away and disappeared through the door. Ellen, with business-like brevity, climbed up into the ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... party-man. But there was a certain sturdiness in Thurlow, that rendered him a more valuable adherent, and a more formidable antagonist. He seems to have regarded all mankind with distrust. On the Bench, his disposition vented itself in judgments remarkable for their brevity and the irascible tone in which they were delivered. His utterance was sonorous, with the mysterious pomp and grandiloquence of an oracle, kindling up at times into solemn denunciation. His "make up" must have been perfect ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... resumed their seats, the line which they had delivered to the operator had been read in telegraphic offices in towns and cities hundreds of miles away. It was distinguished by frankness of language as well as by brevity: ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Hunt, surprised a number of British refugees while playing cards at the Van Tassel tavern. The major completely "turned the cards" upon them by rushing in with brandished stick, which he brought down with emphasis upon the table, remarking with genuine American brevity, "Gentlemen, clubs are trumps." Here, too, according to Irving, arose the two great orders of chivalry, the "Cow Boys" and "Skinners." The former fought, or rather marauded under the American, the latter under the British banner; the former were known as "Highlanders," ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... already occurred to him; for as I know that he is much too clear a thinker not to perceive the validity of these considerations, I am willing to believe that the substance of them was omitted from his essay merely for the sake of brevity; but, for the sake of less thoughtful persons, I have deemed it desirable to state thus clearly that the problem of Theism cannot be solved on grounds of Materialism alone. [This note was written before I had the ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... preserved. Only one sonnet remains to show of what sort was the poetry of Lionardo, prized so highly by the men of his own generation. This, too, is less remarkable for poetic beauty than for sober philosophy expressed with singular brevity of phrase.[236] ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... the first story written by him for Household Words; and in the course of it the old troubles of the Clock came back, with the difference that the greater brevity of the weekly portions made it easier to write them up to time, but much more difficult to get sufficient interest into each. "The difficulty of the space," he wrote after a few weeks' trial, "is CRUSHING. Nobody can have an idea of it who has not had an experience of patient fiction-writing ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... scraps of words, as they that are in haste write but dashes and points for letters. For it is plain that [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted] are abbreviations of the whole words [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted]. As undoubtedly for haste and brevity's sake, instead of [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted] men first said [Greek ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... direction" to "such as have the worth in them to make trial," but "not beginning as some have done [e.g. Comenius] at the cradle, which might yet be worth many considerations," and omitting also "many other circumstances" that might have been mentioned had not brevity been the scope. All this it is necessary to remember in justice to the tract. It is a tract on the education of gentlemen's sons, or of such boys and youths as had hitherto been accustomed to go to the English ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Horace was their disseminator in later times, and was looked up to as final authority. Who has not heard and read repeatedly the now common-place injunctions to be appropriate and consistent in character-drawing; to avoid, on the one hand, clearness at the cost of diffuseness, and, on the other, brevity at the cost of obscurity; to choose subject-matter suited to one's powers; to respect the authority of the masterpiece and to con by night and by day the great Greek exemplars; to feel the emotion one wishes to rouse; to stamp the ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... the fact, certainly," said Defarge. He had had it conveyed to him, in an accidental touch of his wife's elbow as she knitted and warbled, that he would do best to answer, but always with brevity. ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... it is clear that a poem may be improperly brief. Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring, effect. There must be the steady pressing down of ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... of the French victories flew with astonishing rapidity.[1552] The brevity of authentic accounts was amply supplemented by the eloquence of loquacious clerks and the popular imagination. The Loire campaign and the coronation expedition were scarcely known at first save by fabulous reports, and the people only thought ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... and more inwardly vexed, and her little foot beat an impatient tattoo under the table, as she replied with careless brevity to a few of the commonplace observations addressed to her, and cast an occasional annoyed glance at her lord, M le Duc, a thin, military-looking individual, with a well waxed and pointed mustache, whose countenance suggested an admirably executed mask. It was a face that said absolutely nothing,—yet ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Reader find them but little worthy of his approval, he will not have reason at the same time to condemn their prolixity: their brevity will, at least in some degree, atone for their want of ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... keep myself within the promised rules of brevity in this account of his interest with her Majesty, and his care of the Church's rights, if in this digression I should enlarge to particulars; and therefore my desire is, that one example may serve for a testimony of both. And, ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... Brevity is always desirable, and especially where matter is abundant; and the problem is less a grammatical than a substantial one; the solution, I mean, is to deal summarily with all immaterial details, and give adequate ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... and New" in the Saturday Review (March 31, 1879), of whom all I can venture to say is that he or she is a person whose name carries weight in matters connected with biology, though he (for brevity) was in the humour for seeing everything objectionable in me that could be seen, still saw no Mr. Spencer in me. He said—"Mr Butler's own particular contribution to the terminology of Evolution is the phrase two or three times repeated ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... could be worn at any inspiring angle which would most attract the passing eye. Even before the War, shapely legs, feet and ankles had begun to play an increasingly interesting part in the scheme of the Universe—as a result of the brevity of skirts and the prevalence of cabaret dancing. During the War, as a consequence of the War Work done in such centres of activity as the slice of a house in Mayfair, these attractive members were allowed opportunities such as the world had not ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the other with Indian brevity. "My father hath a good eye. He can see very far from the door of ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... with an abhorrence of redundance and irrelevance; not only an economist of words, but also an economist of syllables, choosing always the fewer, and losing nothing of force or precision by that choice. He had what was not less than a passion for brevity. "What," he was asked, "makes a journalist?" and he replied: "A nose for news." But with him the news had to be sifted, verified, and reduced to an essence, not inflated, distorted and garnished with all the verbal spoils of the reporter's ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... account. Yes, I am sorry too. Will you tell me all you can about the Jacobis?" And then Malcolm, with masculine brevity and great distinctness, retailed his impressions of the brother and sister. Elizabeth's face grew grave as ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... constructed as to comprehend a period; and adds, "nor doth alternate rhyme, by any lowliness of cadence, make the sound less heroic, but rather adapt it to a plain and stately composing of music; and the brevity of the stanza renders it less subtle to the composer, and more easy to the singer, which, in stilo recitativo, when the story is long, is chiefly ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... The brevity of the message was very characteristic of the language. Equally characteristic of the stylography was the fact that the words occupied about an inch beyond the address. Following her pencil as she pointed to the ciphers, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... to him, was going to be of a brevity hitherto unseen. Germany had been preparing herself to bring about this event without any long, economic world-disturbance. A single month would be enough to crush France, the most to be feared of their adversaries. Then they would march against ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... world would be a tame and an insipid institution were all men's tastes alike, so the world of smokers would lose much of its romance were all the lovers of the weed of temperament too robust to love a cigarette. Brevity and sweetness are proverbially held to constitute claims upon the respect and admiration of the voluptuous, and to the cigarette these cannot be denied. There is something touching in the self-abnegation of a ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... {286} level there must be, is that of mediocrity, if not of absolute worthlessness: any attempt to secure equality of strength will result in equality of weakness. Efficient development may be cut down into meager brevity, and in this way only can apparent equality of plan be secured throughout. It is far preferable to count upon differences of execution, and to proceed upon the acknowledged expectation that the prominent merits of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... any suspicion, and a little later he incorporated one of the Jennie Allen letters in a speech which he made at a Press Club dinner in New York on the subject of simplified spelling—offering it as an example of language with phonetic brevity exercising its supreme function, the direct conveyance of ideas. The letters, in the end, proved to be the clever work of Miss Grace Donworth, who has since published them serially and in book form. Clemens was not at all offended ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... wild hunt of shadows, the generations fleet away—nothing stays their frantic speed; and to the true observer no fictitious flight of spirits on the Brocken could be half so weird as the passage of one generation of the children of men. As we grow old, the appalling brevity of time impresses itself more and more on the consciousness of calm and thoughtful men; yet nine-tenths of our race spend the best part of their days in trying to make their ghostly sweeping flight from eternity to eternity seem more rapid than it really is. That hot and fevered ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... each other, and provoking one another, and labouring to oil one another's spirits, to this (as other) Gospel duty and prerogative; God could not choose, but be much pleased with such a sight. I might have made this a distinct qualification, but for brevity's sake, I couch it under this head. I come to the last. If you would be accepted, bring faith with you to this service: and that in a fourfold reference; 1. God. 2. The ordinance. 3. Ourselves. ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... tear-stained eyes at a moment of humiliation and defeat. It was too much to expect that a woman could forget this, and the young secretary had the wish that it should be otherwise. So he sat rather moodily contemplating his plate and when he heard steps on the stairs he was surprised at the brevity of the interval. Hamilton Burton had evidently subdued this insurrection in his household with the same whirlwind swiftness that he employed toward enemies ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... in the same way: she wore a loose black jacket, with deep pockets, which were stuffed with papers, memoranda of a voluminous correspondence; and from beneath her jacket depended a short stuff dress. The brevity of this simple garment was the one device by which Miss Birdseye managed to suggest that she was a woman of business, that she wished to be free for action. She belonged to the Short-Skirts League, as a matter of course; for she ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... building, had taken pains to inform himself as to its value, and was prepared to prove that twelve hundred dollars a year was a proper rent for it even at the inflated rates. He made this statement with excellent brevity, moderation, and good temper, and concluded by moving that the term be two instead of ten years. A robust young man, with a bull neck and of ungrammatical habits, said, in a tone of impatient disdain, that the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... considered as a classical work; in his other poems, Pindar, Anacreon, and Horace, were alternately his models, without diminishing the original value of his pieces.[28] Adam Mickiewicz compares him, in respect to the brevity, conciseness, and terseness of his expression, with the last named Roman poet; in reference to his treatment of the classic elements, to Goethe. His brother Andrew translated Virgil's AEneid; his nephew Peter, with more talent and success, the great ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... escape of one of her crew is so interesting, that it has been thought better to leave it as nearly as possible in his own words, than to alter it for the sake of brevity:— ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... but I consider it to be of the same nature as the other so-called forces of the universe; such, for example, as the manifestations of light, of electricity, of magnetism, and the like. When physicists speak of these forces—if the necessities of language and the brevity of the explanation constrain us to adopt the term forces, as though they were real substances—they certainly do not believe, nor wish others to believe, that they are really such. It is well known that such expressions are used to signify the appearance under ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... it out. So, with a sigh, she turned back to the advice Cupid had given her, and prepared to make a faithful transcript of actuality. She called what she now wrote: "A Day at School", and conscientiously set down detail on detail; so fearful, this time, of over-brevity, that she spun the account out to twenty pages; though the writing of it was as distasteful to her as her reading of A ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... After luncheon, with a brevity that she must have understood meant torture, I explained the compact, saying that I could ask for no more promises until two days had passed; and when she would have replied that her promise had been given I warned her that Monsieur had not even begun to show his power. She seemed ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... terrible in its clear brevity, was the story of the agent tampering with her, the nursemaid, until she had given him access to the private rooms, where he had turned over the papers. On the following day, Mr. Williams had been inquiring for his seal-ring, but she herself had not seen it again till some months ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... two columns and a half of the actual movements of armies; to wind up "in our next" with three columns of retrospective consideration as to what might, could, would, or should have been the movements of armies; but that I was, on the contrary, to bear in remembrance the adage about "brevity" being the "soul of wit," and, when I had nothing to write, to write nothing. By so doing, it was added, I should please the editor and charm the public, one of whose minor griefs is, as regards newspapers, that it is brought into a state of disgust with every event of this life ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... Attached Medical Staff, Gueldersdorp, and frequently mentioned in Despatches from that bit of debatable soil, while it was in process of debating, was distinctly a person to cultivate. Not that it was in the least easy—the man was almost quite a bear, but his brevity of speech and brusqueness of manner gave him a cachet that Society found distinguished. He was married, too—so romantic! married to a girl who was shut up with him in Gueldersdorp all through the Siege. Quite too astonishingly lovely, don't you know? and with manners that really ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... this explanation to a greater length than I intended, but the subject is interesting, and not generally well understood; to do it justice, therefore, is not compatible with brevity. Much of what I have said is doubtless already known to your readers; nevertheless I hope it may be useful in affording to H. the information he required, and to ESTE more fixed notions on the subject than he seems to have entertained when he wrote ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... suppose about half of it is threats, abuse and obscenities, and the other half is from long-winded bores with idiotic suggestions and ill-natured gripes. I'll use that old tag line, again—'hoping you appreciate our brevity as much as we ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... which her heart had soared up to the apocalyptic window—recalled how, all the while she was speaking to the man there, she had been chafed by the inadequacy of language. Oh, how much more she had meant than she could express! Oh, the ecstasy of that self-surrender! And the brevity of it! the sudden odious awakening! Thrice in this Oxford she had been duped. Thrice all that was fine and sweet in her had leapt forth, only to be scourged back into hiding. Poor heart inhibited! She ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... Silent," has scarcely developed a single new fact, and has in all cases conceded the thoroughness and sufficiency of Motley's investigations. The present writer's apology for attempting what has been done so incomparably well is, that he feels an essay of moderate length, which, because of its brevity, may find an audience, is a desideratum in English literature, this essay to point out the heroic proportions of William; enough so, if may be, to lend eagerness to those who read, so they may be decoyed into perusing ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... [The unexampled brevity of Burns's letters, and the extraordinary flow and grace of his songs, towards the close of his life, have not now for ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... for two reasons. First, discussion of fundamental considerations, thus taken up at the present point, immediately follows the formulation of the principle (in Chapter III). Furthermore, a fundamental treatment, prior to Chapters VI and VII, permits maximum brevity in the discussion, therein. The commander, having mastered the fundamentals dealt with here, can later follow the detailed procedure with minimum distraction due to ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... afterwards, John Purcel proceeded to the house of his friend and neighbor, Fitzy O'Driscol, as he was usually termed for brevity. O'Driscol was rather a small man—that is to say, he was short but thick, and of full habit. He was naturally well made, and had been considered well-looking, until his complexion became a good deal inflamed from the effects of social indulgence, to which he was rather strongly addicted. ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... James I. would have done wisely to have embraced the philosophic sentiment of a Hungarian prince (1095-1114) who is said to have dismissed the absurd superstition with laconic brevity: 'De strigis vero, quae non sunt, nulla ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... writer is to show, from the brevity of the interval between Marie's disappearance and the finding of the floating corpse, that this corpse cannot be that of Marie. The reduction of this interval to its smallest possible dimension, becomes thus, at once, an object with the reasoner. In the rash pursuit of this ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... determine, or, if that day should prove unfavourable, the first subsequent fine one. Such an arrangement would leave us both free, and if it meets with your approbation would perhaps be the best we could finally resolve upon. Excuse the brevity of this epistle, dear Ellen, for I am in a great hurry, and we shall, I trust, soon see each other face to face, which will be better than a hundred letters. Give my respectful love to your mother and sisters, accept the kind remembrances of all our family, and—Believe ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... as simply and a little more fully in the letter to the Romans, that careful treatise which sums up with marvellous fulness and brevity the gospel he preached to the world. In chapter two, he says, "to them who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and incorruption (He will give) eternal life." Note that in his review thus far he has not yet ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... and as haughty as possible. He made his visits to the Farm of a scarcity and brevity that brought them near to being no visits at all. Such times as he did condescend to come over to see them, he spent the moments telling of all those gay affairs of which he was a part and which Arethusa did not attend, with a brave show of worldliness that ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... of it, since the development of the modern finished school, have been ruinous to European knowledge of art. But I am more and more busied in what I believe to be better work, and can only with extreme brevity state here the conclusions ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... conversation at the door of one saloon which was as characteristic for its brevity as it was a type of the prevailing stoicism. "Hello!" said a departing miner, as he recognized a brother miner coming in, "when did you come down?" "This morning," was the reply. "Made a strike on ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... when somebody else begins to tell the adventures of the night before. I hesitate, therefore, to enter upon an account of my dreams; for it is a literary sin to bore the reader, and a scientific sin to report the facts of a far country with more regard to point and brevity than to complete and literal truth. The psychologists have trained a pack of theories and facts which they keep in leash, like so many bulldogs, and which they let loose upon us whenever we depart from the straight and narrow path of dream probability. One may ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... at this, and he proceeded to say that no further instructions had been received on the subject of our disposal, and this being so he was about to start to interview "She-who-must-be-obeyed," generally spoken of, for the sake of brevity, as "Hiya" or She simply, who he gave us to understand was the Queen of the ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... Sir Reginald can have no claim, being of the half-blood," put in Sir Wycherly, with a brevity of manner that denoted feeling. "The half-blood is as bad as a nullius, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... grove of maples, he was led about by the energetic queen of the feast, whose attire, weird enough while driving, had now culminated in a highly rational although unusual aspect. Everything upon her partook of an unpleasing and surely unnecessary brevity; thus her figure was too short for her breadth, and her skirts too short for her figure; her jacket was too short over her hips, and her gloves too short over her wrists; her hair was too short on her neck and her veil too short over her nose. Yet ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... question: the system, in its present state, appears to me admirably qualified to attain the object in view; and such seems the general character of the French Constitutional Charter, which unites two excellent qualities, great clearness and great brevity. The whole is comprised in seventy-four short articles; and, that no Frenchman may plead ignorance of his rights or his duties, it is usually found prefixed to the almanacks. Some persons might, indeed, be inclined ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... with vaguenesses, lapses, eclipses, that deprived their society of a tactless weight. They cheered us on, in their way; born optimists, clearly, if not logically determined ones, they were always reassuring and sustaining, though with a bright brevity that must have taken immensities, I think, for granted. They wore their hats slightly toward the nose, they strolled, they hung about, they reported of progress and of the company, they dropped suggestions, new magazines, packets ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... of the Queen-Regent, dwelling at great length upon the extraordinary benefit which must accrue to the French nation from the contemplated alliance with Spain; and he was followed by the Duc de Guise, who, with more brevity but equal force, maintained the same argument. "No deliberation," concluded the Duke, "can be required upon so advantageous a proposal. We have only to thank God that her Majesty has so happily accomplished the noble purpose with which heaven had inspired her." ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... Davidge could do. But the agony of the brevity of existence seized them both by the hearts, and their hearts throbbed and bled like birds crushed in the claws of hawks. Their hearts had such capabilities of joy, such songs in them, such love and longing, such delight in beauty—and beauty was so beautiful, so frequent, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... to acknowledge her? Cecilia's own birth and connections, superior as they were to those of Miss Belfield, were even openly disdained by Mr Delvile, and all her expectations of being received into his family were founded upon the largeness of her fortune, in favour of which the brevity of her genealogy might perhaps pass unnoticed. But what was the chance of Miss Belfield, who neither had ancestors to boast, nor ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... whose story you, no doubt, know too well for me to add anything on the subject except that I crossed the Hellespont without so good a motive for the undertaking. As I am just going to visit the Captain-Pacha, you will excuse the brevity of my letter. When Mr. Adair takes leave I am to see the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... Lord, I will put it with a convincing brevity, not indeed a dust-scattering brevity fit only for the mumbling recluse, who perchance in this grey London marching Eastward at break of naked morn, daintily protruding a pinkest foot out of compassing clouds, copiously takes inside of him doses of what is denied to his external bat-resembling ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... The mysterious brevity of this first visit of Beethoven to Vienna we find fully explained in a letter, of which we give a more literal than elegant translation. It is the earliest specimen of the composer's correspondence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... regnum into a view of its kingdoms. Carmen provokes 7 columns, 31/2 folio pages, on metres; lapis 2 columns on precious stones. Italy receives 2 columns, and 3/4 of a column are given to St. Paul. Contrariwise there is often great brevity in his interpretations: 'Samium locus est', 'heroici antiqui', 'mederi curare'. His treatment of miraculum is interesting; 'A miracle is to raise the dead to life; but it is a wonder (mirabile) for a fire to be kindled in the water, or for a man to move his ears.' The next heading is mirabilia, ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... over in silence those points on which MR. KEIGHTLEY and myself agreed, I need scarcely assure him that it was for the sake of brevity, and not from any want of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... an hour ago Mr. Steingall had put in an appearance at her apartment. He had told her, with convincing brevity, exactly why Curtis refrained from adding to her perplexities by announcing the comparative ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... to E.S. Dallas, suggested by the strikes in the London building trade. In these he appears to have sketched the outline of a new conception of social science, which he was now elaborating with more attempt at system and brevity than he had been accustomed ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... the palace attended by a couple of equerries. He rode through the palace gate and into the city. Habitans and citizens bowed to him out of habitual respect for their superiors. Bigot returned their salutations with official brevity, but his dark face broke into sunshine as he passed ladies and citizens whom he knew as partners of the Grand Company or partizans of his ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Aristotle on Poetry, which for generations dictated the principles of dramatic writing, has forty-five short pages; the Republic of Plato, which has influenced thought more than any other philosophic work, has a little over three hundred. Brevity indeed is not always simplicity, and it is possible to be at once simple and lengthy. But any one who examines these Greek writers will find that they are brief, because, avoiding bypaths and by-plots, elaboration or minute detail, they strike out the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Covell's Digest of English Grammar, and are of opinion that in the justness of its general views, the excellence of its style, the brevity, accuracy, and perspicuity of its definitions and rules, the numerous examples and illustrations, the adaptation of its synthetical exercises, the simplicity of its method of analysis, and in the plan of its arrangement, this work ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... philosopher; but he handles a philosophical thought in verse with a dexterity that is entirely his own. The sharpness and swiftness of intellectual power concurring in him, join so much ease with so much brevity, that the poetical vein flows on unhindered, even when involved with metaphysical notions and with scholastic recollections. The comparison of the following noble strain with the original now quoted, decisively and successfully shows the character of an embellishing transformation, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... new year the family moved up to London. The next entry, dated from the Admiralty, expressive in its brevity, runs: "A surprising number of visitors, one very alarming, no less than Lord John—and I saw him." Then, a week later, on February 8: "The agitation of last Monday over again.... After all, perhaps he only wished to show that he ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... "That is hardly a reason—" he began; but he was checked by the brevity of tone with which his companion replied: "I am not aware that I am called upon to give you ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... bordering upon the times of the apostles, testifies that the new evangelical sacrifice was offered throughout the entire world. Origin, Cyprian, Jerome, Chrysostom, Augustine, Basil, Hilary, etc., teach and testify the same, whose words for brevity's sake are omitted. Since, therefore, the Catholic Church throughout the entire Christian world has always taught, held and observed as it today holds and observes, the same ought today to be held and observed inviolably. Nor does St. Paul in Hebrews oppose the ...
— The Confutatio Pontificia • Anonymous
... speaking, in orations, in debates. In Journeys (Volume IX, page 321) is printed the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln. It is the one great, masterly American address, noted not only for its perfect construction, but for its sentiment, its power and its brevity. In no other great address are all these elements combined. Tested by any standard it rings true in thought and is perfect in form. It is worth while to commit it to memory, and father and son should be equally interested in the task, if it can be called a task. Preceding the address is a note ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... sleep, worships sleep until all life seems sleep, and no life any importance without it. He fixes his mind on not sleeping, rushes for his watch with feverish intensity if a nap does come, to gloat over its brevity or duration, and then wonders that each night ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... the water upon the rock. De Beranger has wrought brilliant things—pungent and spirit-stirring—but, like all impassive bodies, they lack momentum, and thus fail to satisfy the poetic sentiment. They sparkle and excite, but, from want of continuity, fail deeply to impress. Extreme brevity will degenerate into epigrammatism; but the sin of extreme length is even more unpardonable. In medio tutissimus ibis. Were I called upon, however, to designate that class of composition which, next to such a poem as I have suggested, should best fulfil the demands of high ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... his career are easy to trace and must be set down here with brevity. A minister's son, and descended from a very old and distinguished family, he was born at Elmwood in Cambridge in 1819. After a somewhat turbulent course, he was graduated from Harvard in 1838, the year of Emerson's "Divinity School Address." He studied law, ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... hunt of shadows, the generations fleet away—nothing stays their frantic speed; and to the true observer no fictitious flight of spirits on the Brocken could be half so weird as the passage of one generation of the children of men. As we grow old, the appalling brevity of time impresses itself more and more on the consciousness of calm and thoughtful men; yet nine-tenths of our race spend the best part of their days in trying to make their ghostly sweeping flight from eternity to eternity seem more rapid than it really is. That hot and ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... opinion. The authors of what is probably the most authoritative book on Italy written from a detached and impartial point of view say that "on the whole, one is bound to conclude that the Government has stretched the Law of Guarantees in its own interest, but that the brevity and incompleteness of the Law is chiefly responsible for the difficulty in construing it."[570] Undoubtedly it may be affirmed that the spirit of the Law has been observed with consistency, though the exigencies of temporal interest have compelled not infrequently the non-observance ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... portrait in over-multiplicity of lines and strokes. Here more than anywhere else Miss Martineau shows the true quality of the writer, the true mark of literature, the sense of proportion, the modulated sentence, the compact and suggestive phrase. There is a happy precision, a pithy brevity, a condensed argumentativeness. And this literary skill is made more telling by the writer's own evident interest and sincerity about the real lives and characters of the various conspicuous people with whom she deals. It may be said that she has no ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... tell but more to hear, and before they parted at Mr. Mulligan's door he knew all of the New World that young Stevens had patiently accumulated in four years. It was a stirring story, that account of the rising impatience of the British colonies, and Stevens told it with animation and brevity. Alexander became so interested that he forgot his personal mission, but he would not subscribe to his friend's opinion that the Colonials were ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... insupportable weight on my heart. It always takes the same form with me—an overwhelming sense of failure in all that I attempt, a dreary consciousness of absolute futility, coupled with the sense of the brevity and misery of human life generally. I ask myself what is the use of anything? What is an almost demoniacal feature of the mood is that it lays a spell of utter dreariness upon all pleasures as well as duties. One feels ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... into the latter, scraps of commonplace morality, and bits of sentiment so long worn as to have lost all their gloss. In general, his genius does not appear to advantage in dialogue. His characters have not always a due regard to the brevity of human life. They make long speeches, preach dull sermons, and ventilate very self-evident propositions with great solemnity of utterance. Their discourse wants not only compression, but seasoning. They ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... was but an incident, to be sure, in the minister's general scheme for "ameliorating the revenue." It was not until the 9th of March, 1764, that Grenville, "not disguising how much he was hurt by abuse," opened his first budget, "fully, for brevity was not his failing," and still with great "art and ability." Although ministers were to be congratulated, he thought, "on the revenue being managed with more frugality than in the late reign," the House scarcely need ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... accustomed to the brevity of the earl's speech, proceeded to the task enjoined him. Warwick next summoned ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with necessary brevity, what is most important of the little that is known of this interesting people. All records bearing upon the subject are imperfect, and the best of them are more profuse in speculation and surmise than in solid fact. The information possessed has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... prayers with you." Then to Firio a letter, which did not come quite so easily: "You see by now that you are mistaken, Firio. I am not coming back. Make the most of the ranch—your ranch—that you can." The brevity, he told himself, was in keeping with Firio's own style. Besides, anything more at length would have opened up an avenue of recollections which properly belonged ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... lonely spot, containing many traces of its ancient importance, and which has furnished an abundance of relics for the notice of the antiquary from the days of Camden, who describes it with that happy brevity that accompanies full knowledge. The pavement we engrave may be seen in full coloured detail in Mr. Ecroyd Smith's volume on Isurium; the borders placed on each side are portions of other pavements from the same place, selected as showing the commonest and the most unusual ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... the subject of the piracies committed by this seriff; and it could easily be shown that the evils accruing from them affect, not only the peaceful trader, but extend to the peaceful agriculturist; but, for the sake of brevity, I deem it sufficient to add, that he exercises the same malign influence on the north coast as Seriff Sahib exercised on the northwest; and that, having surrounded himself by a body of pirates, he arrogates the rights of sovereignty, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... two ages and two literatures is illustrated in a few poems of thirteen lines. Something, certainly, has been retained of the old movement; the refrain falls in time like a well-played bass; and the very brevity of the thing, by hampering and restraining the greater fecundity of the modern mind, assists the imitation. But de Banville's poems are full of form and colour; they smack racily of modern life, and own small kindred with the verse of other days, when it seems as if men walked by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from Helen. It was not long. Mrs. Snow was a little inclined to feel hurt at its brevity. Her husband, however, did ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... spelled, resting upon a thick carpet of cool, dead leaves. With me was a boy from Tanumamanono named Suisuega-le-moni (The Seeker after Truth), who carried a basket containing some cooked food, and fifty cartridges for my gun. "Sui," as he was called for brevity, was an old acquaintance of mine and one of the most unmitigated young imps that ever ate taro as handsome "as a picture," and a most notorious scandalmonger and spy. He was only thirteen years of age, and was of rebel blood, and, child as he was, he knew that his head stood very insecurely upon ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... making slow progress with our intended exposition of Mr Scrope's beautiful and instructive volume. Although salmon and salmon streams form the subject and "main region of his song," he yet touches truthfully, albeit with brevity, upon the kindred nature of sea-trout, which are of two species—the salmon-trout and the bull-trout. The fry of the former, called orange fins, (which, like the genuine parr, remain two continuous years in the river,) greatly resemble the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... only, in their last analysis, of movements by particles of matter, to those other phenomena which we term thought, sensation, or consciousness; but, knowing that so positive an expression of opinion from him will have great weight with many persons, I shall endeavour to show, with as much brevity as is compatible with clearness, that this theory is not only incapable of proof, but is also, as it appears to me, inconsistent with accurate ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... meant also "for light and direction" to "such as have the worth in them to make trial," but "not beginning as some have done [e.g. Comenius] at the cradle, which might yet be worth many considerations," and omitting also "many other circumstances" that might have been mentioned had not brevity been the scope. All this it is necessary to remember in justice to the tract. It is a tract on the education of gentlemen's sons, or of such boys and youths as had hitherto been accustomed to go to the English Public Schools ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... lucus a non lucendo principle) for another quality—that of reticence. It was very rarely indeed that he spoke to anyone, except when called upon to reply to a question; and even then it was noticeable that he invariably employed the fewest and most concise words in his vocabulary. If brevity were the body, as well as the soul of wit, Fink must have been about the wittiest man that ever lived, the Monosyllabic Traveller not excepted. He never received a letter from any one during the whole time of his stay ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... story of a nation like ours in a nutshell, requires a peculiar faculty for selecting, condensing, and philosophizing. The brevity with which he relates the principal events in American history, does not detract from the charming interest of ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... had this virtue, and this very gentlemanlike way—that he always gave his wife as full an answer as he would another lady. He was not given to marital brevity. ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... obtained on January 24 and March 13. As these two accounts do not seem to be fundamentally different for the period of the psychosis, they may here for the sake of brevity ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... several hours in preparing the answers in accordance with the Secretary's corrections. And when they were done, Mr. S. S. Scott, who was to copy them in the letter-book, complimented the colonel on their brevity. In response to this, the colonel said, unfortunately, he wished he, Scott, were the secretary. Scott abused every one who ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... method, (which by keeping the counties and parishes distinct, will give the reader a clearer knowledge of the country than a more elaborate account, where names and situations are mentioned without method, and described promiscuously) I shall confine myself to brevity, at the same time endeavouring to avoid obscurity; and have to lament that the want of correct information prevents me from making this part of the work as ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... proportioning his prose; for he is as careless as any one of the whole century about exact grammatical sequence, and seems to have had no objection on any critical grounds to the long disjointed sentence which was the curse of the time. But his own ruling passion insensibly disposed him to a certain brevity. He liked to express his figurative conceits pointedly and antithetically; and point and antithesis are the two things most incompatible with clauses jointed ad infinitum in Clarendon's manner, with labyrinths of "whos" and "whiches" ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... to Coroner Penfield's questions relative to his name, residence in Washington, and length of service in the city Police Force were given with brevity and a ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... Indian day is but twelve hours fifty-six minutes;—perhaps your first dissatisfaction was evoked by the brevity of the days. There is no twilight whatever; and all activity ceases with sundown: there is no going outside of the city after dark, because of snakes;—club life here ends at the hour it only begins abroad;—there ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... scholars that Quignonez's reforms were too drastic. Tradition was ignored. The labour for brevity, simplicity and uniformity led to the removal from this Breviary of antiphons, responses, little chapters and versicles, and to the reduction of lessons at matins to three, and the number of psalms in each hour was usually only three. His work ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... in Professor Whitney's Second Lecture? He objects, like myself, to comparing the growth of language and the growth of a tree, and like myself, he admits of an excuse, viz., when the metaphor is employed for the sake of brevity or liveliness ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... expression and cast of thought are, in my view, true to type. He is the Lancashire man of action, who affects no literary arts. These pages are bare of heroics. There is a soldierly brevity in his account of even of the bravest exploit. There is also plenty of quiet humour. The reader will search vainly for any "villain of the piece." The "Hun" is to Captain Wilson, as to the normal British officer, ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... first view he gets of the Hall of Dite: red pinnacle, red-hot cone of iron glowing through the dim immensity of gloom;—so vivid, so distinct, visible at once and for ever! It is as an emblem of the whole genius of Dante. There is a brevity, an abrupt precision in him: Tacitus is not briefer, more condensed; and then in Dante it seems a natural condensation, spontaneous to the man. One smiting word; and then there is silence, nothing more said. His silence is more eloquent than ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... flirtable material which had yet come to her hand. It would have been her ideal to have the young men stay till past midnight, and her father come down-stairs in his stocking-feet and tell them it was time to go. But they made a visit of decorous brevity, and Kendricks did not come again. She met him afterward, once, as she was crossing the pavement in Union Square to get into her coupe, and made the most of him; but it was necessarily very little, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Philadelphia, at a well-known and fashionable boarding-house then kept by an aunt of mine, at the corner of Second and Thirteenth streets. He never said anything while there, until he came to pay his board bill, when bidding my aunt farewell, he observed: "Mrs. SAGOE, for terseness and brevity, your steaks surpass any I have ever met with." Aunt Sarah had these words neatly framed, and they have hung in her ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... 18, 1847.—I can hardly tell you what a fever consumes me, from sense of the brevity of my time and opportunity. Here I cannot sleep at night, because I have been able to do so little in the day. Constantly I try to calm my mind into content with small achievements, but it is difficult. You will say, it is not so mightily worth knowing, after all, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... growling, snarling, barking, and snapping,—as if one end of the ridiculous brute's body were at deadly and most unforgivable enmity with the other. Faster and faster, round about went the cur; and faster and still faster fled the unapproachable brevity of his tail; and louder and fiercer grew his yells of rage and animosity; until, utterly exhausted, and as far from the goal as ever, the foolish old dog ceased his performance as suddenly as he ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... negotiation with them which is nearly, if not quite, the strangest thing in our history. Virtually, Seward intrigued against Lincoln for control of the Administration. The events of the next five weeks have an importance out of all proportion to the brevity of the time. This was Lincoln's period of final probation. The psychological intensity of this episode grew from the consciousness in every mind that now, irretrievably, destiny was to be determined. War or peace, ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... was that he had done it, and that the Harden library was his, was Lucia's. It only remained to tell her, and to hand it over to her. He had long ago provided for this difficult affair. He wrote, as he had planned to write, with a judicious hardness, brevity and restraint. He told her that he desired to see her on some business connected with the Harden library, in which he was endeavouring to carry out as far as possible his father's last wishes. He asked to be allowed to call on her some ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... one of these Free churches, and listened to a sermon from Dr. Lindsay, a comfortable-looking professor in some new theological school. It was quite common-place, though not so long as the Scotch ministers are in the habit of giving; for excessive brevity is by no means their besetting infirmity. At the close of the exercises, he announced that a third service would be held in the evening. "The subject," continued he, "will be the thoughts and exercises of Jonah in ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... eleeinologias, kai deinoseos. E-text editor's translation: "Concerning brevity, and speech that moves to pity, and exaggeration. ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... bear with me if I venture to trouble you once more on that eternal subject which has lingered here, until all its natural interest is exhausted, and every topic connected with it is literally worn to tatters. I shall, I assure you, sir, speak with laudable brevity—not merely on account of the feeble state of my health, and from some reverence for the laws of good taste which forbid me to speak otherwise, but also from a sense of justice to those who honor me with their attention. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... Says he to me, with a shake of his head, "a mocking bird has no voice of its own." It warn't a bad sayin', was it? I wish I had noted more of them, for though I like 'em, I am so yarney, I can't make them as pithey as he did. I can't talk short-hand, and I must say I like condensation. Now, brevity is the only use to individuals there is in telegraphs. There is very little good news in the world for any of us; and bad news comes fast enough. I hate them myself. The only good there is in 'em, is to make people write short; for if you have to pay for every word you use, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... men at the card-table bent their heads over the crumpled piece of note-paper spread out before them. Ross smoothed out its edges with his big hand, and the words became distinct enough; the very brevity of the message was touched with sensationalism. It ran: 'I am your brother. Save me!' and there was not another vestige of ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... his clerk, "Jock, ye maunt let 'em into th' church; the dippitation a'n't coom." Presently two clergymen arrived, when the clerk called out, "Ye maunt gang hoame; t' deppitation's coom." The old vicar made an excellent chairman, his introductory remarks being models of brevity: "T' furst deppitation will speak!" "T' second deppitation will speak!" after which the clerk lighted some candles in the singing gallery, and gave out for an appropriate hymn, "Vital spark ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... sentence to express a whole thought. But it is very common for students even, who have formed the habit of thinking by points, to allow brief headings, consisting of single words or short phrases, to represent entire thoughts. Although such headings, on account of their brevity, may be useful, they are merely names for the thought, not statements of the thought itself; and it means the loosest kind of thinking to stop with them. A mere title, as a lecture "About Russia," for instance, designates only the outside limits to which ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... region of finer forces we are now prospecting, this impulse might well be the Desire or Will of the spiritual entity which we ourselves are—that thinking, feeling, inmost essence of ourself, which is the "noumenon" of our individuality, and which, for the sake of brevity we call our "Ego," a Latin word which simply means "I myself." This idea of spiritual impulse is quite familiar to us in our every-day talk. We speak of an impulsive person, meaning one who acts on a sudden thought without giving due heed to consequences; so in our ordinary ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... minor felony, I judge, from the brevity of your incarceration," replied the Governor, emptying the coffee pot into Archie's cup. "I have never been in jail and to the best of my knowledge I have never been indicted; or if I have the sheriff has never caught up with me! My heart bleeds nevertheless for ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... by a taciturn mountaineer, Jim Jones, called simply Jim for the sake of brevity, and, the hour being so early, few were present to see them ride up the hanging slope and into the ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... English physician, nurses were hired without reference to their religion. As soon as Hetty's house was all in order, and her shrubs and trees set out, she went one morning to this House, and asked to see the physician in charge. With characteristic brevity, she stated that she had come to St. Mary's to earn her living as a nurse, and would like to secure a situation. The doctor ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... shall endeavour to avoid technicalities as far as possible, yet as I am writing in the main for students of Theosophy, I shall feel myself at liberty sometimes to use, for brevity's sake and without detailed explanation, the ordinary Theosophical terms with which I may safely assume them to ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... queries would have admitted further remarks, but I wish to set an example of obedience to the recent editorial injunction on brevity. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... teachers, so it may be helpful to see a fellow teacher's plans of work. I wish to disclaim any desire to dogmatize about the methods or the details of teaching. If I have anywhere assumed a tone of authority, it has been merely for the sake of brevity in ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... thousand commandments. His name is unconnected with any great acts of duty or sacrifice, but it is connected with a great many of those acts of magnanimous politeness, of a kind of dramatic delicacy, which lie on the dim borderland between morality and art. "Charles II.," said Thackeray, with unerring brevity, "was a rascal, but not a snob." Unlike George IV. he was a gentleman, and a gentleman is a man who obeys strange statutes, not to be found in any moral text-book, and practises strange virtues nameless from the beginning of ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... Then with brevity I recall the well-known origin of Christianity, and show its advance to the attainment of imperial power, the transformation it underwent by its incorporation with paganism, the existing religion of the Roman Empire. A clear conception of its incompatibility with science caused it to suppress ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... the plural number, when in strictness there was only one high priest: which may be considered as a proof that the evangelists were habituated to the manner of speaking then in use, because they retain it when it is neither accurate nor just. For the sake of brevity, I have put down from Josephus only a single example of the application of this title in the plural number; but it is his ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... moved him and set him with the ships and galleys, the great venturers whipping and creaking and tossing in the night-time under the stars. How the dark appalled or soothed as the humour was, and the right of a first flower upon a tree would sometimes make him weep at the notion of the brevity of its period. ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... made wigs a subject of pulpit denunciation. The two other figures, both clad in dark gray, showed the sobriety of Deacons; one was ridiculously tall and thin, like a man of ordinary bulk infinitely produced, as the mathematicians say; while the brevity and thickness of his colleague seemed a compression of the same man. These four talked with great earnestness, and their gestures intimated that they had revived the ancient dispute about the meeting- house steeple. The grave person in black spoke with composed ...
— An Old Woman's Tale - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the brevity and the lightness of that 'adieu, mes gens'! In three words the instantaneous vanishing of the animals is indicated with masterly precision. One can almost see their tails whisking ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... it is written, "Why have ye conspired to tempt the Spirit of God?" I saw, on the other hand, how much security had grown upon the men of our time, as if there were nothing to cause them fear. These things, therefore, and many more which for brevity's sake we have determined to omit, I revolved again and again in my amazed mind with compunction in my heart, and I thought to myself, "If God's peculiar people, chosen from all the people of the world, the royal seed, and holy nation, ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... definite scenes and "situations." Both sides in this continuing conflict of dispositions were so definite, so intolerant, to the mind of the lady with the perplexed dark eyes who mediated. Her reason was so much with the matrons; her sympathies so much with the girls. She did not like the assured brevity of Mrs. Pembrose's judgments and decisions; she had an instinctive perception of the truth that all compact judgments upon human beings are unjust judgments. The human spirit is but poorly adapted either to rule or to be ruled, and the honesty of all the ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... this treatise being brevity, I shall bring forward a little of what the learned have said of the causes of twins, and whether there be any such things as superfoetations, or a second conception in a woman (which is yet common enough), and as to twins, I shall have occasion to speak of them when I come to show you how the midwife ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... incomplete, as every man's must be. We each have our limitations, the defects of our qualities, the barriers of our environment, the brevity of our day of toil, and we have to be content to carry the fiery cross a little way and then to give it up to other hands. There is only One who could say,' It is done.' Let us see that we do our ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... died out in a sob, and her eyes closed upon the tears gathered in them. It was the final weakening of her courage. For all its brevity, for all it was told in such desperate haste, the story lost nothing of its appeal, nothing ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... excess, and is transmitted in certain definite directions, depending on the connection of the nerve-cells, and partly on habit: or the supply of nerve-force may, as it appears, be interrupted. Effects are thus produced which we recognize as expressive. This third principle may, for the sake of brevity, be called that of the direct ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... begun to succumb to the day, and the labor involved in greasing his boots, which were much in evidence, owing to the brevity of the white duck trousers that needed but one or two more washings, with the accompanying process of shrinking, to convert them into knickerbockers. Bear's grease had turned his ordinary curling brown hair into a damp, shining mass that dripped ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... my luck to be in on this," he said modestly. "Only, Doc, push it along on the high gear, will you—I ain't going to be able to sleep thinking about it." He looked at Helena a little undecidedly—and compromised on brevity. "'Night, Helena," ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... which it is easier to find fault with than the Gerusalemme when estimated by the satiated critical spirit of modern times, which insists upon brevity, and demands in each line a certain poetic excellence; especially if the poem is known only through the medium of a translation, which, however faithful, is but the turning of the wrong side of a piece of tapestry. We may object to the want of originality in the leading characters, to the occasional ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... with dry brevity. If the short answer brought a cloud to Halloway's face it was one that cleared ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... larger of Badcock than was agreeable to the old Adam who was still alive within them. A few well-known "Sims" from St John's and other colleges were present, but not enough to swamp the Ernest set, as for the sake of brevity, I will ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... for instance, in his private prayers for himself, his friends, and his flock. Brevity did not mark his proceedings when engaged in preparing for the Sabbath services. He was not brief when, in his study, he pleaded with some awakened but unbelieving soul to cast itself unreservedly on ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... the life of Arnolfo with the greatest possible brevity because, although his works do not nearly approach the perfection of those of the present time, yet he none the less deserves to be remembered with affection, since, in the midst of so great darkness, he pointed out ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... line 534. 'In Catholic countries, in order to reconcile the pleasures of the great with the observances of religion, it was common, when a party was bent for the chase, to celebrate mass, abridged and maimed of its rites, called a hunting-mass, the brevity of which was designed to correspond with the impatience of the audience.'—Note ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... "As brevity is always highly to be prized, I will say no more at this moment. If any gentleman present desires to address the class, I will recognize him for that purpose. If, after a pause, we ascertain that no member desires to make a general address, I will then rule that ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... are, in nearly every instance, in their origin figurative. The brevity is brought out by comparison with something that is noticeably short or small. Let us examine the words of our list for their figurative qualities. A concise statement is one that is cut down until a great deal is said in a few ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... necessary for their journey to the borough of Eatanswill. As any references to that most important undertaking demands a separate chapter, we may devote the few lines which remain at the close of this, to narrate, with great brevity, the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... still admired beautiful things, and still blessed his life. Sometimes he thought that the frailty of what is beautiful and the brevity of what is good adds value to the beauty ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... after shot swept all before it. Concentrated fire was always his policy. A single sentence would win his case. A big thought, compressed into small compass, was fatal to his foe. It is the clear insight of a great mind only that shaped out truth in words few and simple. Brevity is power, wherever thought is strong. From Gaul Caesar wrote 'Veni, vidi, vici.' Rome was electrified, and the message immortalized. Toombs said to this Court, 'May it please your Honor—Seizin, Marriage, Death, Dower,' and sat down. ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... coxcomical attention to the proportions of his really fine person; and in all other things was he speedily equipped for the disguise he chose to affect. No sooner were these alterations in his appearance completed, (and they were effected with a brevity and readiness that manifested much practice in similar artifices,) than he disposed himself to proceed on the ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... something not perfectly familiar to him in the girl's bright brevity, in her direct personal inquiry; for between them, hitherto, the gaily impersonal had ruled except in moments of ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... whole, he decided that there must be "some pivot upon which the whole structure might turn." He found that "no one had been so universally employed as the refrain." The burden of the poem should be given by the refrain, and it should be a monotone, and should have brevity. Then his task was to select a single word that would be in keeping with the melancholy at which he was aiming, and this he found in the word nevermore. He next invented a pretext for the frequent but ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... number of seeds, 83.5; but we may, for the sake of brevity, say 83; Maximum number observed out of twenty-five ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... distinguished people, like the senor, the present gobernadorcillo; his predecessor, my distinguished friend, Don Valentine; his other predecessor, Don Julio; our renowned captain of the cuadrilleros, Don Melchior, and so many others, whom, for brevity, I will not mention, and whom you see here present. I entreat your honors to give me the floor before any one else speaks. Am I happy enough to have the assembly accede to my humble request?" And the ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... The Colonel spoke with brevity. "Rose left her there talking to your sister. No one seems to have seen her since. I thought she might have been with Sir Eustace. I see I was mistaken. I apologize. But where the ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... doings of children, of the rich, and of all men on a holiday illustrate this. Compare, for example, the speech of trade, where one says the brief and needful thing only, with the talk of excursionists, where verbal expression, having no end beyond itself, develops at length and at leisure; where brevity is no virtue and abundant play takes the place of ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... addressed to the same person—"THE RT. HON. LORD LYDIARD"—and were all signed in the same way—"Your affectionate cousin, James Tollmidge." Judged by these specimens of his correspondence, Mr. Tollmidge must have possessed one great merit as a letter-writer—the merit of brevity. He will weary nobody's patience, if he is allowed to have a hearing. Let him, therefore, be permitted, in his own high-flown way, to ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... Between Kovno and Grodno, both situated on the Niemen, we must note in our battle line the towns of Mariampol, Kalwarya, and the territory east of Suwalki. This front has opposed to it the two Russian fortresses mentioned and between them the bridgeheads at Olita and Sereje. Owing to the brevity of the latest report, it cannot be told whether our attack found an end in the Russian positions. It may be that the attack went further and won territory at least twenty kilometers wide toward the Niemen. Moreover, we have learned that the Russians still held on north of Prasznysz, where ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the peculiar conditions of life and society that are here rudely sketched, and often but barely outlined. The author is aware that, partly from a habit of thought and expression, partly from the exigencies of brevity in his narratives, and partly from the habit of addressing an audience familar with the local scenery, he often assumes, as premises already granted by the reader, the existence of a peculiar and romantic state of civilization, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... and passed through all the desolate bereavements that chilled and scared myself ere my researches had made it mine, thou wouldest have escaped the curse of which thou complainest now. Thou wouldest not have mourned over the brevity of human affection as compared to the duration of thine own existence, for thou wouldest have survived the very desire and dream of the love of woman. Brightest, and but for that error perhaps the loftiest, of the secret and solemn race that fills up the interval in creation between ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... notice the brevity of Harrison's statement, and that Alexander made no statement. Alexander and one other man, named Bollman (if I remember right) were the only ones who defeated me in my efforts to learn something about them ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... within the library only. An article is not like a book;—a long and perhaps serious study, requiring many hours or days to master it. The magazine or review article, whatever other virtues it may lack, has the supreme merit of brevity. ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... Widow Thackeray's. Alfred Stevens was a mute observer during the interview, which did not last very long after the appearance of Margaret. He was confirmed in all his previous impressions of her beauty, nor did the brevity of the conference prevent him from perceiving her intense self-esteem, which under certain influences of temperament is only another name for vanity. Besides they had exchanged glances which were volumes, rendering unnecessary much future explanation. She had seen that he was secretly laughing ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
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