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More "Expatiate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of rustling wings. As bees In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides, Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flow'rs Fly to and fro: or on the smoothed plank, The suburb of their straw-built citadel, New rubb'd with balm, expatiate and confer Their state affairs. So thick the airy crowd Swarm'd and were straiten'd; till the signal giv'n, Behold a wonder! They but now who seem'd In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons, Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... that the lady who had just gone out was not one of these; Caspar granted all Miss Stackpole's merits in advance, but had no further remark to make about her. Neither, after the first allusions, did the two men expatiate upon Mrs. Osmond—a theme in which Goodwood perceived as many dangers as Ralph. He felt very sorry for that unclassable personage; he couldn't bear to see a pleasant man, so pleasant for all his queerness, so ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... people, or to the legislative assembly. When, for example, he undertook to show the wrongfulness of Mississippi repudiation, he would refer to Wordsworth as "a poet and philosopher, whose good opinion was capable of adding weight even to the character of a nation," and then expatiate, with the enthusiasm of a scholar, upon the noble office of such men in human society. He had corresponded with Mr. Wordsworth and knew that members of his family had suffered heavily from the dishonesty of the State; and perhaps ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... began to expatiate on Sanguinetti with no little complacency, for he liked the man's spirit of intrigue, his keen, conquering appetite, his excessive, and even somewhat blundering activity. He had become acquainted with him on his return from the nunciature at Vienna, when he ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... from Rose Beacon they passed in sight of another beacon, and of a village which they call Newworke, in which is a small castle like unto that at Rose Beacon. Here the sea began to expatiate, and about three leagues from hence was the lowest buoy of the river. And now Whitelocke was got forth into the open German Ocean, a sea wide and large, oft-times highly rough and boisterous and full of danger, especially in these parts of it, and as Whitelocke shortly found it to be. Suddenly the ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... the use of mules was an experiment. The "scientific" branch of service has always held that the proper animal to draw a field-piece is the horse. They expatiate with great delight upon the almost human intelligence and sagacity of that noble animal; upon his courage "when he snuffeth the battle afar," and upon the undaunted spirit with which he rushes upon the enemy, and assists his master to work the destruction of his foes. The Artillery ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... confidence the army have reposed in, the justice of their country. And here I humbly conceive it is altogether unnecessary (while I am pleading the cause of an army which have done and suffered more than any other army ever did in the defense of the rights and liberties of human nature) to expatiate on their claims to the most ample compensation for their meritorious services, because they are known perfectly to the whole world, and because (although the topics are inexhaustible) enough has already been said on the subject. To prove these assertions, to evince that my ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... about that; he must know the circumstance, though he never has a chance to expatiate on his side of the house. Poor man! he has the gout, and passes his time in experiments with temperature and diet. Will you ever visit Belem? I shall certainly ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... expatiate on things you know nothing about, like the barbers and the cobblers,' said the grasshopper. 'I only want to know if you're coming to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... metaphor here, both in the word 'access' and in that other one 'stand.' 'The grace' is supposed as some ample space into which a man is led, and where he can continue, stand, and expatiate. Or, we may say, it is regarded as a palace or treasure-house into which we can enter. Now, if we take that great New Testament word 'grace,' and ponder its meanings, we find that they run something in this fashion. The central thought, grand and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... upon no subject could Larry wax so eloquent as upon the foothill country of Alberta. Long after they had secured Larry's new suit and gone on their way through park and boulevard, Larry continued to expatiate upon the glories of Alberta hills and valleys, upon its cool breezes, its flowing rivers and limpid lakes, and always the western rampart of the ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... appeared obscure and unsatisfactory to most of you by reason of us brevity. I shall make amends for that hereafter. In a lecture on 'common sense' I shall try to show what I mean by truths grown petrified by antiquity. In another lecture I shall expatiate on the idea that our thoughts become true in proportion as they successfully exert their go-between function. In a third I shall show how hard it is to discriminate subjective from objective factors in Truth's development. ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... break off here with the presentation of my documents concerning the alteration of the musical ear. If one tried to expatiate instead of merely suggesting, the sketch would soon ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... acquired by trustees, and is open to anyone on the payment of a shilling. It contains various Carlylean relics: letters, scraps of manuscript, furniture, pictures, etc., and attracts visitors from all parts of the world. There is no need to expatiate on the life of the philosopher; it belongs not to Chelsea, but to the English-speaking peoples of all countries. Here came to see him Leigh Hunt, who lived only in the next street, and Emerson from across the Atlantic; such diverse natures as Harriet Martineau and Tennyson, Ruskin and Tyndall, ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... same grace with which the original author used them. For each language has I know not what peculiarity of its own; and if you force yourself to express the naturalness (le naif) of this in another language, observing the law of translation,—not to expatiate beyond the limits of the author himself, your words will be constrained, [163] cold and ungraceful." Then he fixes the test of all good translation:—"To prove this, read me Demosthenes and Homer in ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... whilst his son headed the clan to the number of six thousand. Lord Nairn, the younger brother of the Marquis, also joined in the undertaking. Of these distinguished Jacobites, separate lives will hereafter be given in this work: it therefore becomes unnecessary any further to expatiate upon them here. Of some, whose biography does not present features sufficiently marked to constitute a distinct narrative, some traits may here ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... be thought that my history ended; but not so, this was an act-drop and not the curtain. Upon what followed in front of the barrack, since there was a lady in the case, I scruple to expatiate. The wife of the Marechal-des-logis was a handsome woman, and yet the Arethusa was not sorry to be gone from her society. Something of her image, cool as a peach on that hot afternoon, still lingers in his memory: yet more of her ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but what kept Nina most quiet was when Sarah told her of the album she was making for her. Every artist she knew was working at some offering, and when it would be finished Nina was to have it. She would expatiate for hours on the smallest details. Meissonier, for instance, was painting a water-color, a scene of the war: a German regiment attacking a French inn, which was being defended by French soldiers. Then Gounod was writing a bit of music dedicated ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... Scott went on to expatiate on the popular songs of Scotland. "They are a part of our national inheritance," said he, "and something that we may truly call our own. They have no foreign taint; they have the pure breath of ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... had come in her chat with Cope. He had told her all he had been asked to tell—or all he meant to tell: at any rate he had been given abundant opportunity to expatiate upon a young man's darling subject—himself. Either she now had enough fixed points for securing the periphery of his circle or else she preferred to leave some portion of his area (now ascertained approximately) within a poetic penumbra. Or perhaps she wished ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... I allowed them to expatiate on the perils of procrastination in the treatment of rare old canvases and pigments, and then, having formulated my plans, blandly inquired what the cost would be. It appears that Herr Schwartzmuller had examined the frescoes no longer than six months before ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... is the contrast between these and the general state of that multitude that most directly exposes the popular debasement. It certainly were ridiculous enough to fix on a laboring man and his family, and affect to deplore that he is doomed not to behold the depths and heights of science, not to expatiate over the wide field of history, not to luxuriate among the delights, refinements, and infinite diversities of literature; and that his family are not growing up in a training to every high accomplishment, after the pattern of some family ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... mental attainment; for its office is to enlighten. It has to instruct genius itself, and its powers should be equal to the hardy enterprise. In fine, its object ought to be the love of truth; it is the lust of gain. I need not expatiate on the consequences; ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... from the recitation of poetry is justly ranked among the sweetest enjoyments of human life. This sentiment has been so general, in all ages, civilized and savage, that it would be superfluous to expatiate upon it, even with regard to the less elevated species of poetic composition. The application of it to the more elevated and sublime requires no comment; and our present attempt, therefore, requires no apology. The illustrious names which decorate this volume ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... as it is, now, with the latter place, by seven miles of iron pipes, I would not undertake to say that it retains aught of the rustic simplicity of its greener days. Had the pipes been of wood, indeed, the place might yet have had a chance. To understand this, one should hear the French-Canadian expatiate upon the superiority of the wooden to the metal bridge. Five years ago, the road-trustees of Quebec undertook to span the Montmorency River, just above the great fall, with an iron suspension-bridge. This would shorten the road, they said, by some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... had its wages and—renown; but Pauline made out of this single man her country, friends, and home. Never woman endeavored with truer single-heartedness to understand her spouse. In her life's aim was no failure. Let him expatiate on sound to the bounds of fancy's extravagance, she could confidently follow, and would have volunteered her testimony to a doubter, as if all were a question of tangible fact, to be definitely proved. So in every matter. For all the comfort she was to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... premiss in the argument by saying, "As there is but a little appearance of water or air upon the moon, the conclusion has been inferred that there exists no vegetable or animal life on that globe," [449] other writers, holding opposite views of the moon's physical condition, may be allowed to expatiate on the luxuriant life which an atmosphere with water and temperature would undoubtedly produce. Mr. Proctor's tone is temperate, and his language that of one who is conscious with Hippocrates that "art is long and life is ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... has been, that is most sensibly felt. At most, we can only go back to the naked savage who devoured his prisoner, and adorned himself with bones and feathers here. In the East, imagination is at liberty to expatiate on past grandeur, wisdom, and politeness. Monuments of art and of science meet us at every step: here, every thing, nature herself, wears an air of newness, and the Europeans, so evidently foreign to the climate, and their African slaves, repugnant to every wholesome feeling, ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... you my word that I am speaking with absolute sincerity. You think you can live with impunity in this environment without becoming like all the rest of them; while I tell you that that is a natural necessity. Suppose we expatiate on that a bit . . . will ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... Dinwiddie made them an opening speech, inveighing against the aggressions of the French, their "contempt of treaties," and "ambitious views for universal monarchy;" and he concluded: "I could expatiate very largely on these affairs, but my heart burns with resentment at their insolence. I think there is no room for many arguments to induce you to raise a considerable supply to enable me to defeat the designs of these troublesome people and enemies of mankind." The burgesses ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... delighted to hear of my antipathy and my unfortunate experience, and he proceeded to expatiate on the viciousness of rattlesnakes, particularly those of Arizona. If I had believed the succeeding stories, emanating from the fertile brains of those three fellows, I should have made certain that Arizona canyons ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... welcome change, for they were both religious women who loved to impress a new listener with the amount of their faith and resignation; but when they knew him a little better, and had said the same things several times, and found that as soon as they paused he began to expatiate on the advantages and joys of their present mode of life with Miss Estcourt, of which no one had been talking, they were bored, and left off being pleased to see him, and fell back for amusement on their own bickerings, and the probing of Fraeulein ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... Chick. 'My George and Frederick were both ordered sea-air, when they were about his age; and I have been ordered it myself a great many times. I quite agree with you, Paul, that perhaps topics may be incautiously mentioned upstairs before him, which it would be as well for his little mind not to expatiate upon; but I really don't see how that is to be helped, in the case of a child of his quickness. If he were a common child, there would be nothing in it. I must say I think, with Miss Tox, that a short absence from this house, the air of Brighton, and the bodily and mental training of so judicious ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... upon her two or three days after—as was only his duty—Camors reflected on a strong resolution he had made to keep very cool, and to expatiate to Madame Lescande only on her husband's virtues. This pious resolve had an unfortunate effect; for Madame, whose virtue had been piqued, had also reflected; and while an obtrusive devotion had not failed to frighten ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... his intellect. He desired not only to know, but to discover. In 1772 he hired a small telescope, and through it caught a preliminary glimpse of the rich and varied fields in which for so many years he was to expatiate. Henceforward the purpose of his life was fixed: it was to obtain "a knowledge of the construction of the heavens";[9] and this sublime ambition ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... a trial occurred in which an eminent land valuer was put into the witness box to swell the amount of damages, and he proceeded to expatiate on the injury committed by railroads in general, and especially by the one in question, in cutting up the properties they invaded. When he had finished the delivery of this weighty piece of evidence, the counsel for the Company put a newspaper into his hand, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... over the whole Union, raged especially in New York. Without wishing to expatiate upon its primary causes, the Comptroller of the Treasury could not help remarking that it had shown itself under the same circumstances as recently as in 1873; above all there were issues for new enterprises; the speculation had rushed to take them up at ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... After pointing out to Justin the folly of mere theorising, and recommending him to study the Old Testament Scriptures, as well on account of their great antiquity as their intrinsic worth, he proceeded to expatiate on the nature and excellence of the gospel. [366:1] The impression now made upon the mind of the young student was never afterwards effaced; he became a decided Christian; and, about A.D. 165, finished ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... "Expatiate with glad step, and choose at will Whate'er bright spoils the florid earth contains, Whate'er the waters, or the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... alas, the stir, the scramble, the mad whirl of city life, the debasing contact with low material minds, the daily study of Prices Current, make even of me a muckworm. Still, I might work up a brook or two after I get to the woods, or expatiate on a seven-pound trout: my conscience forbids me to weigh them higher, for I never saw any above three. And yet some men will talk familiarly of ten-pounders!—Or I might analyze the mediaeval garments of Hodge ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... god is represented as lending the money. It is obvious that such advances were made from the temple treasury.(653) It is usual from such instances to expatiate on the temple, or the priests, as the great moneylenders. This is a view easily misunderstood. It is quite true that the temples were great landowners, and had steady incomes, and possessed treasuries; but there is no evidence that they lent on usury. It seems rather that these loans without interest ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... offend. Inform yourself of the characters and situations of the company, before you give way to what your imagination may prompt you to say. There are, in all companies, more wrong beads than right ones, and many more who deserve, than who like censure. Should you therefore expatiate in the praise of some virtue, which some in company notoriously want; or declaim against any vice, which others are notoriously infected with, your reflections, however general and unapplied, will, by being applicable, be thought personal ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... were to go among persons of another class in the metropolis, we should probably find them collecting their entertainment from other topics. One would talk on the subject of some splendid route. He would expatiate on the number of rooms that were opened, on the superb manner, in which they were fitted up, and on the sum of money that was expended in procuring every delicacy that was out of season. A second would probably ask, if it were really known, how much one of ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... them on to expatiate more particularly on his qualities; which they were very fond of doing: but said not one single word in behalf of his morals—Mind that ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... inconsistency of our presence in his premises, that we retired in all the irritation of the well-meaning and misunderstood. The Senator, however, who had absolute confidence in his phrase book, saw a deeper significance in the remarkable unwillingness of the people of Bologna to expatiate upon the feature which had given them fame. "The fact is," said he gloomily, restoring his note-book to his inside pocket as we entered the terra-cotta doorway of St. Catarina, "they're not anxious to let a stranger into the know of it." And this conviction remaining with him, ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... of living as being most compatible with liberty. He delighted to expatiate on the evils of cohabitation. Men, subjected to the same regimen, compelled to eat and sleep and associate at certain hours, were strangers to all rational independence and liberty. Society would never be exempt from servitude ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... suffering member of a suffering body. Take a view of the saints of God in history, sacred or profane, and compare your own individual suffering with theirs: I am apt to think that, great as it is, it will not rise to mediocrity. I could expatiate on this subject, from what comes every day within my own knowledge. The Lord is working in this way all around me; but of that another time. In your own case, try for a moment to shut out of view every thing without your own family, what you ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... display their beauties, or to obviate the criticisms which they have occasioned, and therefore I shall not dwell upon the particular passages which deserve applause. I shall neither show the excellence of his descriptions, nor expatiate on the terrific portrait of suicide, nor point out the artful touches by which he has distinguished the intellectual features of the rebels, who suffer death in his last canto. It is, however, proper to observe, that Mr. Savage always declared ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... relief and amusement; many wakeful nights did she sit by my bedside in trembling expectation that every hour would be my last." Gibbon is rather anxious to get over these details, and declares he has no wish to expatiate on a "disgusting topic." This is quite in the style of the ancien regime. There was no blame attached to any one for being ill in those days, but people were expected to keep their infirmities to themselves. "People knew how to live and die in those days, ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... the fear and wonder his dog had struck in the gaudy Jewesses and the shaky generals, Frank threatened and finally forced the dog to lie down. He continued to expatiate on the dog's points— the number of wrinkles, the bandiness of the legs, etc. The conversation dropped in heat and glare, and the picturesqueness ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... he had found a clue to the heart of his cousin, and he began to expatiate, with unusual eloquence, on the nobleness of that daring sin which "lost angels heaven." Florence listened to him with attention, but not with sympathy. Lumley was deceived. His was not an ambition that could attract the fastidious ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sae lang as a 've heard o' him daein' in the heich Glen, but it wes the times he cam'," Mrs. Stirton used to expatiate, "maybe twice a week for a month. He hed a wy o' comin' through Tochty Wood—the shade helpit him tae study, he said—an' jumpin' the dyke. Sall, gin he dinna mak a roadie for himsel' through the field that year. A' wudna say," she used to add in a casual ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... the northern side deemed it the less necessary to expatiate upon this question, since, admitting the South's basal contention, the right in question depended upon sufficiency of grievance. As, in the South's view, the case was one of sovereigns one party of whom, without referee, was about to break a compact without ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... my St. John! leave all meaner things To low ambition, and the pride of kings. Let us (since life can little more supply Than just to look about us, and to die) Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan; A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot; Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit. Together let us beat this ample field, Try what the open, what the covert ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... he was no more, I felt that it would be a preferable lot to be a beggar in the streets of a Scottish village, than, an abbess in this miserable house of Saint Bride; nor was even that poor object of ambition, on which my father used to expatiate when desirous of persuading me to enter the monastic state by milder means than throwing me off the battlements, long open to me. The old abbess died of a cold caught the evening of the fray; and the place, which might have been kept open until I was capable of filling it, was disposed ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... earnest look; his vivacious eyes were for the most part turned upwards, with a thoughtful and rather a gloomy expression, which I have tried to represent. His lips were closed, but the mouth was not an unkindly one. He was ready enough to expatiate on the arrogant vanity and depraved taste of the Viennese aristocracy, by whom he feels himself neglected, ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... is unwilling to expatiate on the care of the patrimonies, lest he should betray that they consisted not of kingdoms, but farms. The French writers, the Benedictine editors, (tom. iv. l. iii. p. 272, &c.,) and Fleury, (tom. viii. p. 29, &c.,) are not afraid of entering into these humble, though ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... answered Alvarado firmly, "that though I break my heart, I, an unknown, can expatiate his guilt with all the pride of most ancient lineage and birth highest ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the view of the Heathen which you would get in an Exeter Hall meeting. Does not expatiate on their ignorance, their blackness, or their nakedness. Does not at all think of the Florentine Islington and Pentonville, as inhabited by persons in every respect superior to the kings of the East; nor does he imagine every other religion but his own to be log-worship. Probably the people ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... flocks, as the very words of their God, had closely studied human nature. I do not believe that an Almighty Creator condescended to engrave on stone, with his own finger, these words, as they would feign that he did do; but the law is not the less true; the children must expatiate, to the third and fourth generation, the sins of their fathers. Nature, which is all benignant, wills that ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees In spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus rides. Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank, The suburb of their straw-built citadel, New rubbed with balm, expatiate, and confer Their state-affairs: so thick the airy crowd Swarmed and were straitened; till, the signal given, Behold a wonder! They but now who seemed In bigness to surpass Earth's giant sons, Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room Throng numberless—like that pygmean ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... To approve it without restriction would be to approve the Church. To find no wrong in it would be indicative of a dangerous Romish tendency. And we are not prepared to assert that any such symptoms exist to an alarming extent in those who expatiate on religious topics these latter days. There will be differences of opinion on this score, as on many others, and one fellow's opinion is as good, to ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... I might expatiate all night—if you would sit and hear me—on the treatment of such required subject, or introduction of pleasant caprice by the old workmen; but we have no more time to spare, and I must quit this part of our ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... off to consult Prue, and Jessie began to display her purchases before eyes that only saw a blur of shapes and colors, and expatiate upon their beauties to ears that only heard the words—"The splendid cousin ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... when we are virtuous, we may, perhaps, spare our own blushes by allowing our topography, symbolically, to celebrate us, and when our admirers would worship the purity of our intentions, refer them to Walden Pond; or to Mount Shasta, when they would expatiate upon our lofty generosity. It is, perhaps, true, meanwhile, that the chances of a man's leading a decent life are greater in a ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... basis of truth than it unquestionably possessed in the case of Hwangti, was received with murmurs and marks of dissent by the literati. One of them rose and denounced the speaker as "a vile flatterer," and proceeded to expatiate on the superior merit of several of the earlier rulers. Not content with this unseasonable eulogy, he advocated the restoration of the empire to its old form of principalities, and the consequent undoing of all that Hwangti had accomplished. Hwangti interrupted this speaker and called upon ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... incarcerate for wiping the floor with the cold refuser of the gin. "Criffens! Fechars!" said Swipey for a twelvemonth after, stunned by the mere recollection of that home of the glories of the earth. And then he would begin to expatiate for the benefit of young Gourlay—for Swipey, though his name was the base Teutonic Brown, had a Celtic contempt for brute facts that cripple the imperial mind. So well did he expatiate that young Gourlay would slink home to his mother and say, "Yah, even Swipey Broon has been to Fechars, ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... has!" Mr. Bayweather unexpectedly put in. "And he's not the only person he torments about it. Only yesterday when he came down to the rectory to see some old deeds, didn't he expatiate on that subject and succeed in spoiling the afternoon. I had never been forced to think so much about it in all my life. He made me very uncomfortable, very! What's the use of going miles out of your way, I say, out of the station to which it has pleased God to place us? I believe in leaving ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... begin to expatiate about your feelings!" broke in Chatty Burns. "We know Pauline's symptoms only too well: the first day she shows aggressively red eyes and a damp pocket-handkerchief; the second day she writes lengthy letters home, begging to be allowed to return ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the worst, as we have perceived; but the worst was really something she could not know, inasmuch as up to this time Verena chose as little to confide to her on that one point as she was careful to expatiate with her on every other. The change that had taken place in the object of Basil Ransom's merciless devotion since the episode in New York was, briefly, just this change—that the words he had spoken to her there about her genuine vocation, as ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... preach in." He who has no companions must needs talk to himself if he would hear the human voice. "Here, now, a man could expatiate on the work of the Creator, but his sermon would have to be within the fifteen minutes' limit, or his congregation would catch their death of cold. 'Dearly beloved brethren, the words of my text are illustrated by the ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... made her smile with a sob clutching at her heart. The singer lady had taken Teether from the arms of his mother, who stood happily exchanging the topics of the times with the Hoover bride, who had not had thus far sufficient opportunity to expatiate on quite all the adventures of the wedding journey and kept on hand still a small store of happenings to recount to her sympathetic neighbors as they found time and opportunity. The rosy rollicking youngster ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... which every true lover of his country, and, at this crisis, every friend to the liberties of Europe, and of social order in every country, must dwell and expatiate with delight. I mean to wind up all my proofs of our astonishing and almost incredible prosperity with the valuable information given to the Secret Committee of the Lords by the Inspector-General. And here I am happy that I can administer ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... rather trust his own partial experience than any assertions. The idea of hurting his health, is a general idea, which he does not yet comprehend. It is more prudent to keep him out of the way of unripe gooseberries, than to hazard at once his obedience and his integrity. We need not expatiate further; the instance we have given, may be readily applied to all cases in which children have it in their power to disobey with immediate impunity, and, what is still more dangerous, with the certainty of obtaining immediate pleasure. ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... friend while refusing them what they asked for; and in such interviews he had to know his men and to touch the right chord in appealing to their prejudices or their patriotism. The English tenure of Gibraltar was also a perpetual offence to Spanish pride. Irresponsible journalists loved to expatiate on it when they had no more spicy subject to handle. On this, as on all questions affecting prestige only, Morier was tactful and patient. When they should come within the range of practical politics, he could take a different tone. But he knew ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... her, I allowed myself most improperly to put off, from day to day, the moment of doing it, from an unwillingness to enter into an engagement while my circumstances were so greatly embarrassed. I will not reason here—nor will I stop for you to expatiate on the absurdity, and the worse than absurdity, of scrupling to engage my faith where my honour was already bound. The event has proved, that I was a cunning fool, providing with great circumspection for a possible opportunity of making ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Tregear was interdicted in the presence of his sister. He could say nothing as to the Runnymede hunt and the two thunderbolts which had fallen on him, as Major Tifto was not a subject on which he could expatiate in the presence of his father. He asked a few questions about the shooting, and referred with great regret to his absence from ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... reluctance we approach a subject on which in past years so much has been written, often falsely. Besides, it is certainly a most delicate matter to expatiate on the character of any ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... Naturally desiring to represent in the most favourable colours the world from which I came, I touched but slightly, though indulgently, on the antiquated and decaying institutions of Europe, in order to expatiate on the present grandeur and prospective pre-eminence of that glorious American Republic, in which Europe enviously seeks its model and tremblingly foresees its doom. Selecting for an example of the social life of the United States that city in which progress advances at the fastest ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... continuing the history of swarms, I think it proper to recapitulate in a few words the principal points of the preceding letter, and to expatiate on each, concerning the result of new experiments, respecting which I have ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... support of the Federal Government, and the burning of fishing craft manned by poor men, who relied upon the "catch" of the trip for the means of feeding and clothing their families. But I will not expatiate upon the "sentiment" involved in the subject, for fear of incurring the reproach cast by Sir Peter Teazle upon that very humane and sentimental character, Joseph Surface, whose actions differed so widely from ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... glad to expatiate on the subject. "If Mr. Opp could get in a bigger place and get more chances, he'd have a lot more show. But he won't leave Miss Kippy. She's his sister, you know; there is only the two of them, and she's kind of crazy, and has to have somebody take care of ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... sufficient summary of all there is to know. It is obvious that, with such scanty and unexciting materials, no biographer can say very much about what Sir Thomas Browne did; it is quite easy, however, to expatiate about what he wrote. He dug deeply into so many subjects, he touched lightly upon so many more, that his works offer innumerable openings for those half-conversational digressions and excursions of which perhaps the pleasantest kind ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... rot," said the School-master, impatiently. "Country life is ideal only in books. Books do not tell of running for trains through blinding snowstorms; writers do not expatiate on the delights of waking on cold winter nights and finding your piano and parlor furniture afloat because of bursted pipes, with the plumber, like Sheridan at Winchester, twenty miles away. They are dumb on the subject of the ecstasy one feels when pushing a twenty-pound lawn-mower ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... as easy as to destroy. No difficulties occur in what has never been tried. Criticism is almost baffled in discovering the defects of what has not existed; and eager enthusiasm and cheating hope have all the wide field of imagination, in which they may expatiate with little ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... very pathetic in Satterlee's contentment. He confided to Skiddy that he had never been so happy. With glistening eyes he would discourse on "these simple people," "these good hearts," "this lovely and uncontaminated paradise, where evil seems never to have set its hand," and expatiate generally on the beauty, charm, and tranquillity of Samoan life. He dreaded the time, he said, when a ruthless civilization ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... and then his health. He had no sooner returned to his home than, to complicate his difficulties completely, he fell in love with Miss Natalie de Bellefonds, who had just returned from Paris, where she had been completing her education. To expatiate on the perfections of Mademoiselle Natalie would be a waste of ink and paper; it is sufficient to say that she really was a very charming girl, with a fortune which, though not large, would have been a most desirable addition to De Chaulieu, who had ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... a hasty leave of this flourishing colony, and walking up the rising ground to the tents, found Delorier's fire still glowing brightly. We sat down around it, and Shaw began to expatiate on the admirable facilities for bathing that we had discovered, and recommended the captain by all means to go down there before breakfast in the morning. The captain was in the act of remarking that he couldn't have believed it possible, when he suddenly interrupted ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... in amazing spirits, and did nothing all dinner-time, but expatiate upon the companionable and amiable qualities of de Chavannes, whom he already liked, he said, more than any person he had ever seen for so short a time—so clever, so high-spirited, so gallant. Everything, ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... from the southwest fanned the warm cheeks of Margery, as she sat, resting from the labors of the day, with le Bourdon at her side, speaking of the pleasures of a residence in such a spot. The youth was eloquent, for he felt all that he said, and the maiden was pleased. The young man could expatiate on bees in a way to arrest any one's attention; and Margery delighted to hear him relate his adventures with these little creatures; ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... Hispaniola, stood over to Jamaica, intending to finish its circumnavigation. The inhabitants came off, exhibiting the most friendly disposition whenever the vessels neared the shore, and Diego Colon, the interpreter, never failed to expatiate on the wonders he had seen in Spain, and the prowess of the Spaniards who had defeated ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... But now before we expatiate farther concerning saps; it is by some controverted, whether this exhaustion would not be an extreme detriment to the growth, substance, and other parts of trees: As to the growth and bulk, if what I have observ'd of a birch, which has for very many years been ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... To expatiate further upon the famous "No. 9 Pill" would be absurd, as it is as great an institution of the British Army out here as ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... The Deputy took all the responsibility and expected no blame; he received none. In reply to his report, Elizabeth assured him a month later that 'this late enterprise had been performed by him greatly to her liking.' It is useless to expatiate on a code of morals that seems to us positively Japanese. To Lord Grey and the rest the rebellious kerns and their Southern allies were enemies of God and the Queen, beyond the scope of mercy in this world or the next, and no more to be spared ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... are too well trained ever to exploit themselves, their school, or their work. The pictures, the statuary, the fittings, and the equipment are all of the best, and, hence, show for themselves without exploitation. To teachers and pupils it would seem a mark of ill-breeding to expatiate upon their own things. Such a thing is simply not done in this school. The auditorium is a stately, commodious, and beautiful room, and everybody connected with the school accepts it as a matter of course with no boastful comment. ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... thought by the form of the metre; an advantage of verse which makes the poets so much easier to a beginner in the German language than the illimitable weavers of prose. The line or the stanza reins up the poet tightly to his theme, and will not suffer him to expatiate. Gradually, therefore, Pope came to read the Homeric Greek, but never accurately; nor did he ever read Eustathius without aid from Latin. As to any knowledge of the Attic Greek, of the Greek of the dramatists, the Greek of Plato, the Greek of Demosthenes, Pope neither had it ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... infallibly made him sick, the desired result being obtained with almost provoking celerity. Thus even success had palled, and Carnaby's sharp and idle wits had begun to work on the problem which seemed to be occupying his elders. Neither Robinette nor Lavendar could expatiate to the boy on his grandmother's peculiarities, but Carnaby had contrived to find out for himself ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... has happened in my own lifetime;" and then Miss Burleigh left politics, and began to speak of her brother's personal ambition and personal qualities; to relate anecdotes of his signal success at Eton and at Oxford; to expatiate on her own devotion to him, and the great expectations founded by all his family upon his high character and splendid abilities. She added that he had the finest temper in the world, and that ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... express the exact nature of that splendid scene which is here so slightly glanced at. The Holy Spirit has employed the most concise mode of description in order to restrain our fancy within proper limits. We are, therefore, altogether incompetent to expatiate on a subject so sublime, for we know nothing, beyond what is written, of the glory which is associated with spiritual bodies. When Paul was led to speak of a state of future enjoyment, he could only express himself in the language of conjecture, and say, "I ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... though, in imitation of the ancient manner [a], he has thought proper, for the sake of a philosophical debate, to take the wrong side of the question. In answer to his argument, we do not desire you to expatiate in praise of the ancients: their fame wants no addition. What we request is, an investigation of the causes which have produced so rapid a decline from the flourishing state of genuine eloquence. I call it rapid, since, according to Aper's own chronology, the period from the death of Cicero does ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... farther to expatiate, I could enlarge upon several instances of like nature, but this ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... demeanour. Her sister Martha, on the contrary, spoke out vigorously, daring Miss Wooler so much, face to face, that she sometimes received a box on the ear, which hardly any saint could have withheld. Then Martha would expatiate on the danger of boxing ears, quoting a reverend brother of Miss Wooler's. Among her school companions, Martha was called "Miss Boisterous," but was always a favourite, so piquant and fascinating were her ways. She was not in the ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... the fundamental principle of that Constitution, was the Bill of Rights—that Bill of Rights, drawn by George Mason, you, gentlemen, in your Constitution of New York, from your first Constitution to your last, have adopted. So when you expatiate upon the merits of written-over prescriptive constitutions, and with such eloquence and convincing force, I beg you to remember that this now forlorn and bereaved Commonwealth was the first people on earth that ever promulgated a formal, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... this, though foolish, was not intended for more than respect, and our Bishops did not desire it; at which he smiled. Then he went on to expatiate upon what he had seen in some of our churches (probably while on duty as Government servant): the display, as it seemed to him, so like this; the pomp, as he thought it, so fine, like this; the bowing and prostrating, and even on the part of those who did not do these things, the evident participation ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... it seemed so big and so out of proportion to my slim little body. But admonished by the look which I surprised on Mistress Callista's high-bred face, I quickly recalled an expression so unsuited to my position as guest, and, with a gush of well-simulated rapture, began to expatiate upon the interesting characteristics of the room, and express myself as delighted at the prospect ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... hermit proceeded to enter into details of the flora, fauna, and geology of his island-home, and to expatiate in such glowing language on its arboreal and herbal wealth and beauty, that the professor became quite ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... would have rejoiced for the sake of the family. But, as it was, she did not dare to tell him. He would have received her tidings with silent scorn. And even Henrietta would not be enthusiastic. She felt that though she would have delighted to expatiate on this great triumph, she must be silent at present. It should now be her great effort to ingratiate herself with Mr Melmotte at ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... "the English had landed twelve days too late," and the Journalist drew a graphic, and purely imaginary, picture of the pathos of the Belgians straining their eyes in vain to the West for the coming of the men in khaki, and unfortunately he let himself expatiate a bit ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... which, alike in theology, morals, and politics, appeared to him to sap the foundations of every higher principle in human nature, he was led by the whole tenour of his mind to dwell upon the existence in the soul of perceptions not derivable from the senses, and to expatiate on the immutable distinctions of right and wrong. Goodness, freed from all debasing associations of interest and expedience, such as Hobbes sought to attach to it, was the same, he was well assured, as it had existed ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... attitude—your cravat finically adjusted, and tied sufficiently tight to produce a fine full-blooming countenance: corsets and bag pantaloons are indispensably necessary to accoutre you for the stand. When in this trim, dilate upon the events of the times—know but very little of domestic affairs—expatiate and criticise upon the imperfections or charms of the passing multitude—tell a fine story to some acquaintance who knows but little about you, and, by this means, borrow as much money as will furnish you with a very small ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... apprehensions we are able to form upon the subject, viz. "That they who are accounted worthy of that resurrection, shall be as the angels of God in heaven." I lay a stress upon this reserve, because it repels the suspicion of enthusiasm: for enthusiasm is wont to expatiate upon the condition of the departed, above all other subjects, and with a wild particularity. It is moreover a topic which is always listened to with greediness. The teacher, therefore, whose principal purpose is to draw upon himself attention, ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... commentators are wont to take Magna Charta clause by clause, and word by word, and letter by letter. They linger lovingly and proudly over every jot and tittle of that splendid instrument. And you will indulge me this Communion night of all nights of the year if I expatiate still more lovingly and proudly on that great Covenant which our Lord has sealed to us again to-day, and has written again to-day on the walls of our hearts. Moses made haste as soon as the old Charter was read over to him, and nothing shall delay us ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... me if I don't let go. Fact is, we've been keeping it up a bit all night. Byfield leaves us—to expatiate in realms untrodden ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of this search, it were useless to expatiate: every one is sensible of it, and, sooner or later, it must occur. Let us not allow our grandchildren to surpass us in everything, but let us set about this ourselves. Monstrous as the idea seems, it is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... what to answer. A great change had come over the Gaulish lady; she felt a great pride in her virtue, and in the victory she had won over herself, and while she sunned herself in the splendor of her own merits, she wished that Hermas too should feel and recognize them. She began to expatiate on all that she had to forego and to endure in the oasis, and she discoursed of virtue and the duties of a wife, and of the wickedness and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and countrymen to lend them their ears, or accepted the atrocious accusation of being a young man; and then a Bishop, who had been a schoolmaster himself, delivered an address. It was delightful to see and hear the good man expatiate. I did not believe much in what he said, nor could I reasonably endorse many of his statements; but he did it all so genially and naturally that one felt almost ashamed to question the matter of his discourse. Yet I could not help wondering why it is thought advisable always to say exactly the ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a wife attentive to her household duties, the husband has on his hands a sick, nervous wife, whose house the physician never quits, who can stand no draught, and can not bear the least noise. We shall not expatiate further on this subject. Every reader—and as often as in this book we speak of "reader," we mean, of course, the female as well as the male—can himself further fill the picture: he has illustrations enough among ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... these too narrow bounds for the capacious mind of man to expatiate in, which takes its flight farther than the stars and cannot be confined by the limits of the world, that extends its thoughts often even beyond the utmost expansion of matter and makes excursions into that incomprehensible inane. Nor will it be so ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... discourses of a riding-master he encountered in Vienna, who spoke so eloquently of the noble animal he had to deal with, that he almost persuaded Sir Philip to wish himself a horse. We have known ancient mariners expatiate so lovingly on the frantic enjoyments of the deep sea, that very youthful listeners have for the time resolved to know no other existence. If the author of the "Arcadia" had been permitted to become a prancing steed, he might, after the first exhilarating canter, have ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... other officiating Mid[-e]/ priests, when the conversation is confined chiefly to the candidate's progress. He then gives to each of them presents of tobacco, and after an offering to Ki/tshi Man/id[-o], with the pipe, they expose the articles contained in their Mid[-e]/ sacks and explain and expatiate upon the merits and properties of each of the magic objects. The candidate for the first time learns of the manner of preparing effigies, etc., with which to present to the incredulous ocular demonstration of the genuineness and divine origin of the Mid[-e]/wiwin, or, as it is ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... Bible books she is the greatest reader that I know. I wish you could hear her expatiate on David and Isaiah; and she is in the right, too. They leave behind them, in a rude barbarism of religious ideas, Egypt and Greece. By the bye, is it not strange that the two great literatures of antiquity, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... but Madame Ozhogin observed my solemn taciturnity, and she inquired anxiously after my health. I replied, of course, with a bitter smile, that I was thankful to say I was perfectly well. Ozhogin continued to expatiate on the subject of their visitor; but noticing that I responded reluctantly, he addressed himself principally to Bizmyonkov, who was listening to him with great attention, when a servant suddenly came in, announcing ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... object than the explanation of some article of the faith, or a panegyric on the life of some saint. There are no interpreters of the gospel to be heard from the Spanish pulpit, except during the period of Lent. The preachers like rather to refer to and expatiate largely on miracles, than to unfold the morals of the New Testament; and, in general, it may be taken as a fact that the immense majority of the Spanish population, and especially those of the poorer class, have the most incomplete and erroneous ideas of ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... them all about civil war or civil government who would have to be excused by his wife for some such reason, upon which there would be a chatter of regret and the meeting would fall into a conference upon matters in general. While the gentlemen would "expatiate and confer" with one another as to what breeding would produce the most wrinkles on a sheep's back (thus giving the greatest wool-bearing surface), the ladies would devise new wrinkles to make use of it. And usually the ones who produced the raw material would ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... for introducing Crashaw thus. I had to point out the fact, and now having done with it, I could heartily wish I had room to expatiate on his loveliness even in such poems as ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... for the first time in many a week, listened without irritation while Freddie poured forth his unending praise of "my wife." As Brent knew them intimately, Freddie felt free to expatiate upon all the details of domestic economy that chanced to be his theme, with the exquisite lunch as a text. He told Brent how Susan had made a study of that branch of the art of living; how she had explored the unrivaled Parisian markets and groceries and ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... almost between the blows of the executioner's crow-bar on the wheel, in the tightening of the windlasses at the rack—it is not absent, whatever people may say, in Anne of Geierstein, nor even quite lacking in the better parts of Count Robert of Paris. But we must not expatiate on its effects; we must only give a little attention to the means by which ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... takes up a News-Paper, the first Thing he turns to is the Price of the Stocks; if he looks over the Advertisements, it is in Quest of some new Project; when he has finished his Enquiry, and mixes in Conversation, you hear him expatiate upon the Advantage of some favourite Project, or curse his Stars for missing the lucky Moment of buying as he intended at the Rise of the South-Sea. Another complains of the Roguery of some Broker or Director, whom he intrusted; this I have heard canvass'd over and over, with ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... fashion for those who have any connection with letters to expatiate on the infinite blessings of literature, and the miraculous achievements of the press: to extol, as a gift above price, the taste for study and the love of reading. Far be it from me to gainsay the inestimable ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... as water adapts itself to the shape of the vessel in which it is placed. She dare not assert herself or be herself, lest, in some way, she should lose her tentative grasp upon the counterfeit which largely takes the place of love. If he prefers it, she will expatiate upon her fondness for vaudeville and musical comedy until she herself begins to believe that she likes it. With tears in her eyes and her throat raw, she will choke upon the assertion that she likes the smell of smoke; she will assume passion when his slightest touch makes her shudder ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... made no doubt, when they had as good a subject to expatiate upon, as I had, in the pleasure before me, of seeing so many agreeable friends of Mr. B.'s, they would maintain the title they claimed of every ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... 'It has been said that sojourns to sacred waters as fraught with merit; that ablutions in such waters is meritorious; and that listening to the excellence of such waters is also meritorious. I desire to hear thee expatiate on this subject, O grandsire. It behoveth thee, O chief of Bharata's race, to mention to me the sacred waters that exist on this earth. I desire, O thou of great puissance, to hear ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... birth of his son Edward and his daughter Julia, and he always refers to them gently as "brother" and "sister." To plant a tree to mark an event was one of his picturesque customs—an unconscious desire, perhaps, to project himself into the future. I am quite sure, as we accompany him, he will expatiate on the improvement in the soil which he has effected; that he will point out eagerly not only the domestic but the wild animals about the place; and that he will stand for a few moments on the high bluff overlooking the sea and the marshes ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... Transfiguration was worshipped in that spot; how it was carried away by the French in 1809, and restored to the pope by the Allies in 1814. As you have already in all probability admired this masterpiece in the Vatican, allow him to expatiate, and search at the foot of the altar for a mortuary slab, which you will identify by a cross and the single word, Orate; under this gravestone is buried Beatrice Cenci, whose tragical story cannot but ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 121. We shall here make use of the liberty allowed in a note to expatiate a little on the present subject. It must be confessed, that the king in this declaration touched upon that circumstance in the English constitution which it is most difficult, or rather altogether impossible, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... and my wife is being consulted morning, noon, and night; and I never come into the room without finding their heads close together over a paper, and hearing Bob expatiate on his favorite idea of a library. He appears to have got so far as this, that the ceiling is to be of carved oak, with ribs running to a boss overhead, and finished mediaevally with ultramarine blue and gilding,—and then away he goes sketching Gothic patterns of bookshelves which require only ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... mind goes to its work hurriedly and languidly, and feels it to be no more than a burden. The mere lessons may be learnt from a sense of duty; but that freshness of power which in young persons of ability would fasten eagerly upon some one portion or other of the wide field of knowledge, and there expatiate, drinking in health and strength to the mind, as surely as the natural exercise of the body gives to it bodily vigor,—that is tired prematurely, perverted, and corrupted; and all the knowledge which else it might so covet, it now seems a wearying ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... and sufferings of his captivity being the cause of his death; and Father Juan de las Missas, [who perished] at the hands of the hostile Camucones; besides other fathers. I regard it as superfluous to expatiate further on this, or to attempt to spur on those who are running so gloriously. Therefore I conclude with the words, which the glorious bishop and martyr, St. Cyprian, wrote in a similar case in his epistle number 81, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... Alexander of Macedon, "one of the greatest sons of earth," as Bishop Thirlwall had called him—Alexander, with whose deplorable capacity for "unbending" a scholar like Eames was perfectly familiar—he would switch the conversation into realms of military science, and begin to expatiate upon the wonderful advance which has been made since those days in the arts of defensive and offensive warfare—the decline of the phalanx, the rise of artillery, the changed system of fortifications, those modern inventions ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... now to those scenes of felicity, which slaves are said to enjoy. The first advantage which they are said to experience, is that of manumission. But here the advocates for slavery conceal an important circumstance. They expatiate indeed on the charms of freedom, and contend that it must be a blessing in the eyes of those, upon whom it is conferred. We perfectly agree with them in this particular. But they do not tell us that these advantages are confined; that they are confined to some favourite domestick; ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... latter place, by seven miles of iron pipes, I would not undertake to say that it retains aught of the rustic simplicity of its greener days. Had the pipes been of wood, indeed, the place might yet have had a chance. To understand this, one should hear the French-Canadian expatiate upon the superiority of the wooden to the metal bridge. Five years ago, the road-trustees of Quebec undertook to span the Montmorency River, just above the great fall, with an iron suspension-bridge. This would shorten ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... constitutes a volume of intricate pantheistic philosophy, should be given to a great commander just at the moment when he is planning his attack and is absorbed with the most momentous responsibilities; it seems to us strangely inconsistent also to expatiate elaborately upon the merits of the Yoga philosophy, with its asceticism and its holy torpor, when the real aim is to arouse the soul to ardor for the hour of battle. But these infelicities are no obstacle to the Hindu mind, and the consistency of the plot is entirely secondary to the doctrine ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... side of fifty. As people grow old they accumulate two kinds of spiritual supplies: one, a pile of doubts, questionings, and mysteries; and the other, a much smaller pile of positive conclusions. There is a great temptation to expatiate upon the former subjects, for negative and critical statements have a seductive appearance of depth and much more of a flavour of wisdom than clear and succinct declarations. But I will endeavour to resist this temptation, and will set down, as concisely as I can, some of the positive convictions ...
— 21 • Frank Crane
... I enter upon this theme? How shall I expatiate upon excellencies which it was my fate to view in their genuine colours, to adore with an immeasurable and inextinguishable ardour, and which, nevertheless, it was my hateful task to blast and destroy? Yet I will not be spared. I shall find, in the rehearsal, new incitements ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... appearance of water or air upon the moon, the conclusion has been inferred that there exists no vegetable or animal life on that globe," [449] other writers, holding opposite views of the moon's physical condition, may be allowed to expatiate on the luxuriant life which an atmosphere with water and temperature would undoubtedly produce. Mr. Proctor's tone is temperate, and his language that of one who is conscious with Hippocrates that "art is long and life is short." He says, in one of his contributions to lunar science, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... as it has never yet failed to do, then comes into effect that fundamental law of production from the soil on which we have so frequently had occasion to expatiate, the law that increased labor, in any given state of agricultural skill, is attended with a less than proportional increase of produce. The cost of production of the fruits of the earth increases, caeteris paribus, with ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... the man Who was to take it from me, slipt his hand, And threw my heart into the scalding pan; My heart that brought it (do you understand?) The offerer's heart. "Your heart was hard, I fear." Indeed 'tis true. I found a callous matter Began to spread and to expatiate there: But with a richer drug than scalding water I bath'd it often, ev'n with holy blood, Which at a board, while many drank bare wine, A friend did steal into my cup for good, Ev'n taken inwardly, and most divine To supple hardnesses. But at the length Out of the caldron getting, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... personal concerns are judiciously reduced to the threefold distinction of mind, body, and estate. The sentiments of the mind excite and exercise our social sympathy. The review of my moral and literary character is the most interesting to myself and to the public; and I may expatiate, without reproach, on my private studies; since they have produced the public writings, which can alone entitle me to the esteem and friendship of my readers. The experience of the world inculcates a discreet reserve on the subject of our person and estate, and we soon learn that a free ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... round me, by which some of those whom we expected might be made subservient to our sport. Every man has some favourite topick of conversation, on which, by a feigned seriousness of attention, he may be drawn to expatiate without end. Every man has some habitual contortion of body, or established mode of expression, which never fails to raise mirth if it be pointed out to notice. By premonitions of these particularities I secured ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... sob clutching at her heart. The singer lady had taken Teether from the arms of his mother, who stood happily exchanging the topics of the times with the Hoover bride, who had not had thus far sufficient opportunity to expatiate on quite all the adventures of the wedding journey and kept on hand still a small store of happenings to recount to her sympathetic neighbors as they found time and opportunity. The rosy rollicking ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... opposition to the secular clergy; 7, the interdiction of great churches and rich convents. On all these points and many others infidelity to Francis's will was complete in the Order less than twenty-five years after his death. We might expatiate on all this; the Holy See in interpreting the Rule had canonical right on its side, but Ubertino di Casali in saying that it was perfectly clear and had no need of interpretation had good sense on his side; let that ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... He resolved, however, that the old man should retain all the consequence of being, in his own opinion, the first to communicate the important intelligence. At the same time, he also determined that in the expected conference he would permit David Deans to expatiate at length upon the proposal, in all its bearings, without irritating him either by interruption or contradiction. This last was the most prudent plan he could have adopted; because, although there were many doubts which David Deans could himself ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... he seemed to have made a stout battle, desired he would sit down and recover wind; and after he had swallowed a brace of bumpers, his vanity prompted him to expatiate upon his own exploit in such a manner, that the confederates, without seeming to know the curate was his antagonist, became acquainted with every circumstance of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... was always quiet in demeanour. Her sister Martha, on the contrary, spoke out vigorously, daring Miss Wooler so much, face to face, that she sometimes received a box on the ear, which hardly any saint could have withheld. Then Martha would expatiate on the danger of boxing ears, quoting a reverend brother of Miss Wooler's. Among her school companions, Martha was called "Miss Boisterous," but was always a favourite, so piquant and fascinating ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a very ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate here. I take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the old Egyptians; because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them. For though their progenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless, by their tower, have intended ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... cases the god is represented as lending the money. It is obvious that such advances were made from the temple treasury.(653) It is usual from such instances to expatiate on the temple, or the priests, as the great moneylenders. This is a view easily misunderstood. It is quite true that the temples were great landowners, and had steady incomes, and possessed treasuries; but there is ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... of a better term, his 'life,' that is a sufficient summary of all there is to know. It is obvious that, with such scanty and unexciting materials, no biographer can say very much about what Sir Thomas Browne did; it is quite easy, however, to expatiate about what he wrote. He dug deeply into so many subjects, he touched lightly upon so many more, that his works offer innumerable openings for those half-conversational digressions and excursions of which perhaps the pleasantest kind of criticism ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... under the statesmen I have mentioned. How fare they with you under the worthies of our time? Is there any likeness or resemblance? I pass over other topics, on which I could expatiate; but observe: in this utter absence of competitors, (Lacedaemonians depressed, Thebans employed, none of the rest capable of disputing the supremacy with us,) when we might hold our own securely and arbitrate the claims of others, we have ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... summer of 1761 Mr. Thomas Sheridan was at Edinburgh, and delivered lectures upon the English Language and Publick Speaking to large and respectable audiences. I was often in his company, and heard him frequently expatiate upon Johnson's extraordinary knowledge, talents, and virtues, repeat his pointed sayings, describe his particularities, and boast of his being his guest sometimes till two or three in the morning. ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... all begin to expatiate about your feelings!" broke in Chatty Burns. "We know Pauline's symptoms only too well: the first day she shows aggressively red eyes and a damp pocket-handkerchief; the second day she writes lengthy letters ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... stir, the scramble, the mad whirl of city life, the debasing contact with low material minds, the daily study of Prices Current, make even of me a muckworm. Still, I might work up a brook or two after I get to the woods, or expatiate on a seven-pound trout: my conscience forbids me to weigh them higher, for I never saw any above three. And yet some men will talk familiarly of ten-pounders!—Or I might analyze the mediaeval garments of Hodge and his old Poll. ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... Bilancio, who died a captive of the Mahometan [king of] Jolo, the harsh treatment and sufferings of his captivity being the cause of his death; and Father Juan de las Missas, [who perished] at the hands of the hostile Camucones; besides other fathers. I regard it as superfluous to expatiate further on this, or to attempt to spur on those who are running so gloriously. Therefore I conclude with the words, which the glorious bishop and martyr, St. Cyprian, wrote in a similar case in his epistle number ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... in continuing the history of swarms, I think it proper to recapitulate in a few words the principal points of the preceding letter, and to expatiate on each, concerning the result of new experiments, respecting which I have ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... not expatiate upon the number of dwarfs who will be found representing Grecian statues in all parts of the metropolis; because I am inclined to think that this will be a change for the better; and that the engagement of two or three in Trafalgar Square will tend to the improvement ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... gracious reception to her early recollections of his kinsman, began at once to speak of Guy Darrell; and in a little time they were walking over the turf, or through the winding alleys of the garden, linking talk to the same theme, she by question, he by answer—he, charmed to expatiate—she, pleased to listen—and liking each other more and more, as she recognised in all he said a bright young heart, overflowing with grateful and proud affection, and as he felt instinctively that he was with one who sympathised in his enthusiasm—one who had ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the foundations of every higher principle in human nature, he was led by the whole tenour of his mind to dwell upon the existence in the soul of perceptions not derivable from the senses, and to expatiate on the immutable distinctions of right and wrong. Goodness, freed from all debasing associations of interest and expedience, such as Hobbes sought to attach to it, was the same, he was well assured, as it had existed from all eternity in the mind of God. ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides, Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flow'rs Fly to and fro; or on the smoothed plank, The suburb of their straw-built citadel, New rubb'd with balm, expatiate, and confer Their state affairs. So thick the airy crowd Swarm'd and were straiten'd; till the signal giv'n, Behold a wonder! They but now who seem'd In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons, Now ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... added the all-important department of Foreign Affairs; so that, if things remain as they are, the representatives of the people must be content to feed on second-hand information.... Most of us can remember a time when it was a favorite topic with popular agitators to expatiate on the number of lords which a government contained, as if every peer of Parliament wielded an influence necessarily hostile to the liberties of the country. We look down in the present age with contempt on such vulgar prejudices; but we seem to be running into the contrary extreme, when we allow ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... as much as he wished. He repeated, in stronger terms, the necessity there was for caution. He was far from suspecting me to possess an impertinent and talkative disposition, or that, in my eagerness to expatiate on my own concerns, I should overstep the limits of politeness. But this was not enough. I was to govern myself by a persuasion that the interests of my friend and myself would be materially affected by ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... such another. When a good pair has been produced, the city friend will not have to look far among her town acquaintances for a "golf fiend," even if she herself is not one, and to him or her she must show the stocking and expatiate upon its merits: That it is not machine-made, but hand-knit; that it is thicker, softer, made of better material than woven ones, and above all, not to be found in any shop, but must be ordered from ...
— How to make rugs • Candace Wheeler
... although spreading over the whole Union, raged especially in New York. Without wishing to expatiate upon its primary causes, the Comptroller of the Treasury could not help remarking that it had shown itself under the same circumstances as recently as in 1873; above all there were issues for new enterprises; the speculation had rushed to take them up at a premium, and people ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... every Saturday night in term time and read essays. They discussed all manner of topics. Sometimes they descended to mere commonplaces—Is a little knowledge a dangerous thing? Is it possible ridentem dicere verum? (which Fitzjames is solitary in denying)—but more frequently they expatiate upon the literary, poetical, ethical, and philosophical problems which can be answered so conclusively in our undergraduate days. Fitzjames self-denyingly approves of the position assigned to mathematics at Cambridge. In literary matters I notice that he does not think ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... did indeed affect you; yet, for my own sake, as well as yours, I referred you to Dr. Bartlett, for the particulars of some parts of it, upon which I could not expatiate. ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... to hear him talk, and upon no subject could Larry wax so eloquent as upon the foothill country of Alberta. Long after they had secured Larry's new suit and gone on their way through park and boulevard, Larry continued to expatiate upon the glories of Alberta hills and valleys, upon its cool breezes, its flowing rivers and limpid lakes, and always the western rampart of ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... to expatiate upon subjects of philosophical importance and its no accomplishment. Three examples of the mental concavity sunk into by these barbarians. An involved episode which had the outward appearance of being otherwise than what ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... altogether sure that that is the right way to look at it," said Mrs. Tolbridge; and then she went on with her sewing, not caring to expatiate on the subject. Her husband appreciated only the advantages of La Fleur, but she knew something of her disadvantages. The work on which she was engaged at that moment would have been done by the maid, had not that young woman's services been so frequently required of ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... had shown ever so little shame I would have thrown the book aside, and never again have spoken of it. But to insult me by supposing that force of impudence can overcome the testimony of my own reason! Very well. The question shall be decided by others. All who have heard you expatiate on your—your 'bio-sociological' theory shall be made acquainted with this French writer, and form their own opinion as to ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... that all this, though foolish, was not intended for more than respect, and our Bishops did not desire it; at which he smiled. Then he went on to expatiate upon what he had seen in some of our churches (probably while on duty as Government servant): the display, as it seemed to him, so like this; the pomp, as he thought it, so fine, like this; the bowing and prostrating, and even on the part of those who did not ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... to perceive a certain coldness in the manner of Mrs. Hazeldean, but began immediately to talk to her about Frank; praise that young gentleman's appearance; expatiate on his health, his popularity, and his good gifts, personal and mental,—and this with so much warmth, that any dim and undeveloped suspicions Mrs. Hazeldean might have ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... consent we editors are called the "moulders of public opinion." Writing in our easy chairs or making suave speeches over the walnuts and wine, we take scrupulous care to expatiate on this phase of our function. But the real question is: who "moulds" us? for assuredly the hand that moulds ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... capitalists, who contributed by their means and influence to the support of the Federal Government, and the burning of fishing craft manned by poor men, who relied upon the "catch" of the trip for the means of feeding and clothing their families. But I will not expatiate upon the "sentiment" involved in the subject, for fear of incurring the reproach cast by Sir Peter Teazle upon that very humane and sentimental character, Joseph Surface, whose actions differed so widely ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... Wodzinski she married a country gentleman, and subsequently became blind.] As the circumstances of the case and the motives of the parties are unknown to me, and as a biographer ought not to take the same liberties as a novelist, I shall neither expatiate on the fickleness and mercenariness of woman, nor attempt to describe the feelings of our unfortunate hero robbed of his ideal, but leave the reader to make his own reflections ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... half thy brightness can reveal Through those dim organs, whose corporeal touch O'ershadoweth thy pure essence. Yet, my Muse, If Fortune call thee to the task, wait thou Thy favourable seasons; then, while fear And doubt are absent, through wide nature's bounds Expatiate with glad step, and choose at will Whate'er bright spoils the florid earth contains, Whate'er the waters, or the liquid air, 300 To manifest unblemish'd Beauty's praise, And o'er the breasts of mortals to extend Her gracious empire. Wilt thou to the isles Atlantic, ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... children. They had always great appetites to be satisfied. As soon as they began to run about, the rapidity with which they wore out their boots and the knees of their trousers, and outgrew their frocks, was a subject upon which Mrs. Gray could expatiate for hours. Mary had a tender, strong pity from the earliest age for the down-at-heel, over-burdened stepmother, which lightened her own load, as did the vicarious, motherly love which came to her for each ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... know his men and to touch the right chord in appealing to their prejudices or their patriotism. The English tenure of Gibraltar was also a perpetual offence to Spanish pride. Irresponsible journalists loved to expatiate on it when they had no more spicy subject to handle. On this, as on all questions affecting prestige only, Morier was tactful and patient. When they should come within the range of practical politics, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... Jove! You must not neglect to expatiate upon the beauty and fascinations of the adorable Gypsy; that will be ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... place before them a certain liberal competence, with the opportunity of rising to independence in a sphere where the number of competitors would be so low as to render final success less precarious. It is needless to expatiate more amply upon the benefits which must accrue from an appointment of this nature, which would impose but a trifling additional burden on the crown, since it is extremely possible that a barrister might ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... unaffected affability, give me high satisfaction. From perhaps a weakness, or, as I rather hope, more fancy and warmth of feeling than is quite reasonable, my mind is ever impressed with admiration for persons of high birth, and I could, with the most perfect honesty, expatiate on Lord Errol's good qualities; but he stands in no need of my praise. His agreeable manners and softness of address prevented that constraint which the idea of his being Lord High Constable of Scotland[317] might otherwise have occasioned. He talked ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... dedication, and bishops wished they could read the Greek. Far otherwise was it with the impending struggle of the Reformation: there the cleavage of sides followed very different lines. Into that wide field we cannot now expatiate; but it is important to notice an element which the German Renaissance contributed to the Reformation, and which played a considerable part in both movements—the ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... as Hyder-Ali did political and military genius, will appear in the world again for centuries; most of the princes are politic, some are brave, and perhaps no few are credulous. While England is confiding in our loyalty, we might expatiate on her perfidy, and our tears fall copiously on the broken sceptre in the dust of Delhi. Ignorant and stupid as the king's ministers may be, the East India Company is well-informed on its interests, and alert in maintaining them. I wonder that a republic so wealthy and so wise should be ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... too narrow bounds for the capacious mind of man to expatiate in, which takes its flight farther than the stars and cannot be confined by the limits of the world, that extends its thoughts often even beyond the utmost expansion of matter and makes excursions into that incomprehensible inane. Nor will it be so strange to think ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... that, do you take offence and fling the book away, or has he your licence to expatiate in panegyric? Whether he has yours or not, he has that of all these centuries, wherein not a critic has found fault with him for it, not he that dared to scourge his statue [Footnote: Zoilus, called Homeromastix.], not he whose marginal pen ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... College of Twelve who offered sacrifice when there was increase in the produce of the soil. Writers and records of antiquity say no more of Caius Piso, not even mentioning the name of his father. On such a little known man a forger of Roman history could safely expatiate; the author of the Annals does so in a portraiture that bears the stamp of the fifteenth century: this is particularly observable when Piso is spoken of as "of brilliant repute among the populace for virtues," or, rather, "qualities that wore the form ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... and upon whom he depends. In every age, the voice of conscience has been regarded as the voice of God, so that when it has filled man with guilty apprehensions, he has had recourse to sacrifices, and penances, and prayers to expatiate his wrath. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... I should expatiate more largely on the other advantages of the glorious constitution of these by-the-whole-of-Europe-envied realms, but I am called away to take an account of the ladies and other artificial flowers at a fashionable rout, of which ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... name of a well-known millionaire. "Even if I receive orders over there, I will not allow myself to be persuaded into making America my home. Interest in art should be elevated—" The pale, aristocratic man with the care-worn expression went on to expatiate upon his hopes and troubles, while his wife, who was still beautiful, looked on with a blase expression of irony. Probably without being conscious of it, Professor Toussaint too frequently referred to the United ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Invercauld, together with the romantic rocks that overshadow Mar Lodge, a seat of Lord Fife's, and the cataract of the Dee, which dashes down the declivity with impetuous violence in the grounds adjoining to the House. All these I presume you will soon see, so that it is unnecessary for me to expatiate on the subject. I sincerely wish that every happiness may attend you in your progress. I have given you an account of our match in my epistle to Herefordshire. We unfortunately lost it. I got 11 notches the first innings and 7 the 2nd, making 18 in all, which was more runs ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... the furnace; that he attended the fire, and that no one touched any of them till they were baked and taken out by him. Here the evidence for the prosecution closed. Mr. Warendorff observed, that he should forbear to expatiate further upon the conduct of the prisoner; that he had been ordered by his sovereign to speak of him with all possible moderation; that he earnestly hoped the defence that should be made for Count Laniska might be satisfactory; and that the mode of trial which had been ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the festival had warmed and opened all hearts, he took occasion in an interview with the chief to expatiate upon the parental affection which had led the father and mother of his little sister to give up their friends and home, and come hundreds of miles away, in the single hope of sometimes looking upon and embracing her. The heart of ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... time to expatiate on the loveliness of Grace's character, and to betray the weight of the blow he had received, in gaining this sudden knowledge of her danger. He seemed to pass all at once from a state of inconsiderate security to one of total hopelessness, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... the influence of architecture on religion than Monsignore Catesby. Monsignore Catesby had been a pupil of Pugin; his knowledge of ecclesiastical architecture was only equalled by his exquisite taste. To hear him expound the mysteries of symbolical art, and expatiate on the hidden revelations of its beauteous forms, reached even to ecstasy. Lothair hung upon his accents like a neophyte. Conferences with Father Coleman on those points of faith on which they did not differ, followed ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... points was, that the faith of the country had been pledged by the ratification of the treaty, and that consequently a refusal of the House to appropriate the money would be a breach of faith. This led him to expatiate upon the necessity ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton
... search, it were useless to expatiate: every one is sensible of it, and, sooner or later, it must occur. Let us not allow our grandchildren to surpass us in everything, but let us set about this ourselves. Monstrous as the idea seems, it is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... with sleeves rolled up, began to expatiate on "ours." "We haven't got but one—it was made in Savannah by Dr. Langon Cheves. Maybe they'll send it up to-day, maybe not. I've seen it. It's like Joseph's coat in the Bible. They say the ladies gave their silk dresses for it. Here'll be a strip of purple and here one of white with roses on ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... of incunabula, first editions or uncut copies, and keeping them from publication or reading, and, in short, of worshipping anything, be it a book or a coin, merely because it is rare. Men never expatiate on rariora in literature or in china, or talk cookery and wines over-much, without showing themselves prigs. It is not any beauty in the thing, but the delightful sense of their own culture or wealth which they cultivate. When there is nothing ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Plato himself might have uttered on such an occasion. In conversations with select friends, and those whose studies had been nearly the same with his own, it was a usual thing with him, in libations to the memory of eminent men among the ancients, to bring their characters into view, and expatiate on those particulars of their lives that had rendered them famous." Observe the arts of the ridiculer! he seized on the romantic enthusiasm of Akenside, and turned it to ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... we have the simple genesis of the army usurer, so-called. He exists and thrives in every garrison in the empire, and the broad swath he mows within the ranks of the army testifies to his diligence and to his successful methods. It would be going too far to expatiate on this matter. Suffice it to say that the system by which the usurer brings hundreds, nay thousands, to disgrace and premature retirement from the army, usually involving the impoverishment of the officers' ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... preserv'd when I made my answer, it seems that "I assured him that the way of peaceable, dutiful and legal representations of our grievances had already been tried to no purpose": With the most profound Taciturnity I "was pleas'd most largely to expatiate upon this point", & with all my "altum silentium" my "interrogations follow'd one another with such amazing rapidity, that he (poor man) was almost out of breath in repeating them." - Here, gentle reader, ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... head, and wiped her eyes. Lord Courtland perceived the effect his eloquence had produced upon the childish fancy of his daughter, and continued to expatiate upon the splendid joys that awaited her in a union with a nobleman of the Duke's rank and fortune; till at length, dazzled, if not convinced, she declared herself "satisfied that it was her duty to marry whoever papa pleased; but—" and a sigh escaped her as she contrasted her noble ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... present want of a house in Madrid is more murmured at there than needs, considering the King is absent, and moreover, though I am much straitened in matter of lodgings, yet that I have a very large and pleasant garden thereunto belonging, to expatiate and refresh myself and wearied family in, I received a message from Baron Battevil to this effect, besides general tenders of all manner of service which is in his power; that he is at present (as in truth he is) sick, or else would have waited upon me himself in person; ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... implacably offend. Inform yourself of the characters and situations of the company, before you give way to what your imagination may prompt you to say. There are, in all companies, more wrong beads than right ones, and many more who deserve, than who like censure. Should you therefore expatiate in the praise of some virtue, which some in company notoriously want; or declaim against any vice, which others are notoriously infected with, your reflections, however general and unapplied, will, by being applicable, be thought personal and leveled at those people. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Rose Beacon they passed in sight of another beacon, and of a village which they call Newworke, in which is a small castle like unto that at Rose Beacon. Here the sea began to expatiate, and about three leagues from hence was the lowest buoy of the river. And now Whitelocke was got forth into the open German Ocean, a sea wide and large, oft-times highly rough and boisterous and full of danger, especially in these ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... Macedon, "one of the greatest sons of earth," as Bishop Thirlwall had called him—Alexander, with whose deplorable capacity for "unbending" a scholar like Eames was perfectly familiar—he would switch the conversation into realms of military science, and begin to expatiate upon the wonderful advance which has been made since those days in the arts of defensive and offensive warfare—the decline of the phalanx, the rise of artillery, the changed system of fortifications, those modern inventions in the department ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Drummer. Life in Foray was little less than banishment, though it had its wages and—renown; but Pauline made out of this single man her country, friends, and home. Never woman endeavored with truer single-heartedness to understand her spouse. In her life's aim was no failure. Let him expatiate on sound to the bounds of fancy's extravagance, she could confidently follow, and would have volunteered her testimony to a doubter, as if all were a question of tangible fact, to be definitely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... upon Love. She adapts herself to him as water adapts itself to the shape of the vessel in which it is placed. She dare not assert herself or be herself, lest, in some way, she should lose her tentative grasp upon the counterfeit which largely takes the place of love. If he prefers it, she will expatiate upon her fondness for vaudeville and musical comedy until she herself begins to believe that she likes it. With tears in her eyes and her throat raw, she will choke upon the assertion that she likes the smell of smoke; she will assume passion when his slightest ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... who desired friends, Romans, and countrymen to lend them their ears, or accepted the atrocious accusation of being a young man; and then a Bishop, who had been a schoolmaster himself, delivered an address. It was delightful to see and hear the good man expatiate. I did not believe much in what he said, nor could I reasonably endorse many of his statements; but he did it all so genially and naturally that one felt almost ashamed to question the matter of his discourse. ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... clocks and chests, are "possessed" by denizens of the occult world. Of course, everyone has heard of the "unlucky" mummy, the painted case of which, only, is in the Oriental department of the British Museum, and the story connected with it is so well known that it would be superfluous to expatiate on it here. I will therefore pass on to instances of other mummies "possessed" in a more or less ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... brethren's settlement; as those who accompanied the expedition, and who, from their intercourse with the Europeans, had obtained many conveniences by barter, and from the teaching of the missionaries had acquired a knowledge of the gospel. These advantages the latter did not fail to expatiate upon to their heathen countrymen; and once the brethren met with Sybilla, Jonathan's wife, surrounded by a company of women under the shadow of a skin boat, set on edge, exhorting them with great simplicity and fervour to hear and believe the gospel. Even Uttakiyok ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... received a visit from the wife of our neighbour Dr. T——. As usual, she exclaimed at my good fortune in having a white woman with my children when she saw M——, and, as usual, went on to expatiate on the utter impossibility of finding a trustworthy nurse anywhere in the South, to whom your children could be safely confided for a day or even an hour; as usual too, the causes of this unworthiness or incapacity for a confidential servant's occupation were ignored, and the fact laid ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... him. He is not to be disposed of by placing him in any ready-made and familiar class. If he had turned out a bad man, there would have been abundance in his early life to point the moralist's warning tale; as he turned out a very reputable one, there is scarcely less abundance for panegyrists to expatiate upon. Certainly he was a man to attract some attention and to carry some weight, yet not more than many another of whom the world never hears. At the time of his marriage, however, he is upon the verge of development; a new period of his life is about to begin; what had been dangerous ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... enter into details of the flora, fauna, and geology of his island-home, and to expatiate in such glowing language on its arboreal and herbal wealth and beauty, that the professor became ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... reticent on such matters; but I do not mind owning to you that Marian Nowell is unforgotten by me, and that the loss of her will have an enduring influence upon my life; and having said as much as that, Belle, I must request that you will not expatiate any more upon this poor girl's breach of faith. I have forgiven her long ago, and I shall always regard her as the ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... happened in my own lifetime;" and then Miss Burleigh left politics, and began to speak of her brother's personal ambition and personal qualities; to relate anecdotes of his signal success at Eton and at Oxford; to expatiate on her own devotion to him, and the great expectations founded by all his family upon his high character and splendid abilities. She added that he had the finest temper in the world, and that he was ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... totally unconscious of any secrets. He fancied himself and his pretty, nice, little sister all alone by their very selves, and he went so far as to expatiate on the vastness of the world, and how in this crowd there was no other life that bordered or ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... had told half his story, with the flattering observation, "What needs I say ony mair about it? There's the Captain kens mair anent it than I do, or any man in the town." Then would I salute the strangers courteously, and expatiate to their astonished minds upon crypts and chancels, and naves, arches, Gothic and Saxon architraves, mullions and flying buttresses. It not unfrequently happened, that an acquaintance which commenced in the Abbey concluded in the inn, which served to relieve the solitude as well as the monotony ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... Raffaelle's Transfiguration was worshipped in that spot; how it was carried away by the French in 1809, and restored to the pope by the Allies in 1814. As you have already in all probability admired this masterpiece in the Vatican, allow him to expatiate, and search at the foot of the altar for a mortuary slab, which you will identify by a cross and the single word, Orate; under this gravestone is buried Beatrice Cenci, whose tragical story ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... perhaps, a minister of the Church. After pointing out to Justin the folly of mere theorising, and recommending him to study the Old Testament Scriptures, as well on account of their great antiquity as their intrinsic worth, he proceeded to expatiate on the nature and excellence of the gospel. [366:1] The impression now made upon the mind of the young student was never afterwards effaced; he became a decided Christian; and, about A.D. 165, finished ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... and amongst the number was Mr. John Tyas, who attended as a reporter for the Times Newspaper. This circumstance I shall ever consider as a most fortunate. Mr. Tyas is a gentleman of a most respectable family and connections, and it is unnecessary to expatiate on his character and talents, it being, as far as regards these, quite enough to say, that he has long occupied the station of a reporter to the Times Newspaper, a lucrative and responsible situation, which none but a man of character and talent could fill for any length of time. Mr. Tyas was ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... informed by the worthy gentlemen then present, who were at once delighted and amazed to hear an instrument of so simple an organization use an exact articulation of words, a just cadency in its sentences, and a wonderful pathos in its pronunciation; not that he designs to expatiate in this practice, because he cannot (as he says) apprehend what use it may be of to mankind, whose benefit he aims at in a more particular manner: and for the same reason, he will never more instruct the feathered kind, the parrot having been his ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... Mistress you will please to remember) deliberately, wilfully, added to my trials and vexations. It was her delight to expatiate on the style in which we were to live in India, and on the establishment we should keep, and the company we should entertain when he got his advancement. My pride rose against this barefaced way of pointing out the contrast my married life ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... He did not expatiate further. In his excitement he had laid his hand upon the thing, with the natural result that it collapsed. More by accident than design I caught the jug in my arms. I also caught the water it contained. The basin rolled on its edge and little damage was done, except ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... has now come when we can specially do honour to Nelson's memory without wounding the feelings of other nations. There is no need to exult over or even to expatiate on the defeats of others. In recalling the past it is more dignified as regards ourselves, and more considerate of the honour of our great admiral, to think of the valour and self-devotion rather than the misfortunes of those against whom he fought. We can do full justice ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... of the moral mission of woman, glorious despite its acknowledged imperfections, it is not necessary to deny the common assertion, that men have a monopoly of the sentiment of friendship. Neither is it necessary to expatiate on the great happiness this sentiment is capable of yielding in the comparatively narrow and quiet lives of women, or to insist on the larger space which ought to be assigned to the cultivation of it in those lives. The moral of the ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... do, and for him to allow me to dine at the protracted hour of four. After dinner, it was with pleasure,—when surrounded by all the book-treasures, specified in the early part of this letter, and which were then lying in detached piles upon the floor[73]—I heard Mr. Scherer expatiate upon the delight he felt in taking a trip, every summer or autumn, among the snow-capt mountains of the Tyrol; or of burying his cares, as well as changing his studies and residence, by an excursion along the lakes and mountains of Switzerland. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... clearness, to use figures and apologies, to put cases, as circumstances required, and to relate facts, sometimes briefly and succinctly, and, at other times, more at large and with greater feeling. Nor did they omit, on occasion, to resort to translations from the Greek, and to expatiate in the praise, or to launch their censures on the faults, of illustrious men. They also dealt with matters connected with every-day life, pointing out such as are useful and necessary, and such as are hurtful and needless. They had occasion often to support the authority of fabulous accounts, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... also very curious to know about the Spaniards, their horses and dogs, and strange weapons, and Marina in answering their questions took care to expatiate upon the exploits and victories of her adopted countrymen, and to state the extraordinary marks of respect they had received from Montezuma. This had its effect upon the cacique, who presently sent the general some slaves to make bread for ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... shorten life, or prove perceptibly hurtful to health, yet its excessive employment certainly generates many formidable disorders, particularly of the nerves and stomach, and subjects its votary to innumerable inconveniences and sufferings. Our space will not permit us to expatiate any further; and we shall therefore conclude our article by relating from Rush a very interesting anecdote of Dr. Franklin, which places the common-sense view of this matter in the strongest possible light. A few months before Franklin's death, he declared to one of his friends, that he had never ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... impossible outside pure mathematics, rested everything on evidence, and really founded the Huxleyan school. He plagiarized by anticipation many things from the rationalistic leaders of our time, from Strauss and Baur (being the first to expatiate on "Christian Mythology"), from Renan (being the first to attempt recovery of the human Jesus), and notably from Huxley, who has repeated Paine's arguments on the untrustworthiness of the biblical manuscripts and canon, on the inconsistencies of the narratives of Christ's resurrection, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Queen Elizabeth than what has happened in my own lifetime;" and then Miss Burleigh left politics, and began to speak of her brother's personal ambition and personal qualities; to relate anecdotes of his signal success at Eton and at Oxford; to expatiate on her own devotion to him, and the great expectations founded by all his family upon his high character and splendid abilities. She added that he had the finest temper in the world, and ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... among persons of another class in the metropolis, we should probably find them collecting their entertainment from other topics. One would talk on the subject of some splendid route. He would expatiate on the number of rooms that were opened, on the superb manner, in which they were fitted up, and on the sum of money that was expended in procuring every delicacy that was out of season. A second would probably ask, if it were really ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... this, when he became conscious of it, and stop short with an abrupt turn to something else. With a real interest, which he gave humorous excess, he would celebrate some little ingenious thing that had fallen in his way, and I have heard him expatiate with childlike delight upon the merits of a new razor he had got: a sort of mower, which he could sweep recklessly over cheek and chin without the least danger of cutting himself. The last time I saw him he asked me if he had ever shown me that miraculous razor; and I doubt ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of English taxation, indeed, both from the amount levied, and the acquiescence of the people in such unheard-of burdens, seems to have utterly bewildered the khan's comprehension.[4] "All classes, from the noble to the peasant, are alike oppressed; yet it is amusing to hear them expatiate on the institutions of their country, fancying it the freest and themselves the least oppressed of any people on earth! They are constantly talking of the tyranny and despotism of Oriental governments, without having ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... than clocks and chests, are "possessed" by denizens of the occult world. Of course, everyone has heard of the "unlucky" mummy, the painted case of which, only, is in the Oriental department of the British Museum, and the story connected with it is so well known that it would be superfluous to expatiate on it here. I will therefore pass on to instances of other mummies "possessed" in a more or ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... were the nightly companions of his pillow. What he read stimulated without satisfying his intellect. He desired not only to know, but to discover. In 1772 he hired a small telescope, and through it caught a preliminary glimpse of the rich and varied fields in which for so many years he was to expatiate. Henceforward the purpose of his life was fixed: it was to obtain "a knowledge of the construction of the heavens";[9] and this sublime ambition he cherished to ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... must call, for want of a better term, his 'life,' that is a sufficient summary of all there is to know. It is obvious that, with such scanty and unexciting materials, no biographer can say very much about what Sir Thomas Browne did; it is quite easy, however, to expatiate about what he wrote. He dug deeply into so many subjects, he touched lightly upon so many more, that his works offer innumerable openings for those half-conversational digressions and excursions of which perhaps the pleasantest ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... boredom! stupefying Theme! Whereon with eloquence less deep than full, Still maundering on in slow continuous stream, All can expatiate, and all be dull: Bane of the mind and topic of debate That drugs the reader to a restless doze, Thou that with soul-annihilating weight Crushest the Bard, and hypnotisest those Who plod the placid ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... when he came to mention his wife, the hair split, and instead of continuing, he branched off, to tell me she was the step-daughter of "So-and-so," that her own father, who was "Somebody," had died of "something," and had been buried "somewhere"; and then that hair split, and he proceeded to expatiate on the two fathers' qualities, and state their different business occupations, after which, out of breath, and far, far from the original subject, he had to hark back two and a half pages and tackle his ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... we have any real possession of the divine flame, it will burn off our wrists the bands and chains of our old vices, and we shall stand pure and clean, emancipated by the fire which will consume only our sins, and be for our true selves as our native home, where we walk at liberty and expatiate in the genial warmth. That is the blessed and effectual way of purifying, which slays only the death that we carry about with us in our sin, and makes us the more truly living for its death. Cleansing is only possible if we are immersed in the Holy Ghost and in fire, as some piece ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... here I humbly conceive it is altogether unnecessary (while I am pleading the cause of an army which have done and suffered more than any other army ever did in the defense of the rights and liberties of human nature) to expatiate on their claims to the most ample compensation for their meritorious services, because they are known perfectly to the whole world, and because (although the topics are inexhaustible) enough has already been said on the subject. To prove these assertions, to evince ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... is by no means easy to accomplish the work of life, it is harder still to bear suffering and to benefit by it. Have you ever seen a man to whom nature had given great talents and grace great virtues, so that the possibilities of his life seemed unbounded, while he had imagination enough to expatiate over them: a man who might have been a missionary, opening up dark countries to civilisation and the gospel; or a statesman, swaying a parliament with his eloquence and shaping the destinies of millions by his wisdom; or a thinker, wrestling with the ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... of friends. Sometimes Maroney would take a hand in a social game of euchre at Patterson's, at other times he would take Porter or May out for a drive behind "Yankee Mary," and as they drove along expatiate on ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... the lips have grown harder and more prominent, that the legs and feet are daily altering their shape, and that the hair is beginning to change into stubs of feathers. And till the probability of so wonderful a conversion can be shewn, it is surely lost time and lost eloquence to expatiate on the happiness of man in such a state; to describe his powers, both of running and flying, to paint him in a condition where all narrow luxuries would be contemned, where he would be employed only in collecting the necessaries of life, and where, ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... she knew the worst, as we have perceived; but the worst was really something she could not know, inasmuch as up to this time Verena chose as little to confide to her on that one point as she was careful to expatiate with her on every other. The change that had taken place in the object of Basil Ransom's merciless devotion since the episode in New York was, briefly, just this change—that the words he had spoken to her there about her genuine vocation, as distinguished from the hollow and factitious ideal with ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... shady side of fifty. As people grow old they accumulate two kinds of spiritual supplies: one, a pile of doubts, questionings, and mysteries; and the other, a much smaller pile of positive conclusions. There is a great temptation to expatiate upon the former subjects, for negative and critical statements have a seductive appearance of depth and much more of a flavour of wisdom than clear and succinct declarations. But I will endeavour to resist this temptation, ...
— 21 • Frank Crane
... all. Harsh and crabbed as his nature no doubt was, and bitter and spiteful at times, his conversation must yet have seemed like a perpetual feast of honeyed sweets to his farmer friend. Doubtless there was plenty of variety in it: now he would expatiate on the beauty of the green downs over which he had just ridden, the wooded slopes in their glorious autumn colours, and the rich villages between; this would remind him of Malthus, that blasphemous monster who had ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... were yet to be discovered and named. It might be found the richest land under the sun, exhaustless in fertility, yielding the most valuable productions, and unfailing in its resources. It was possible it would prove a sterile desert. Imagination could not but expatiate in this unbounded field and unexplored wilderness; and there are few persons entirely secure from the influence of imagination. The real danger attending the first exploration of a country filled with wild animals and savages; ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... illustrations of its truth. Who were more liberal-hearted, lofty-minded, gayer, more jocund, elastic, adventurous, given to fun and frolic, than the top-men of the fore, main, and mizzen masts? The reason of their liberal-heartedness was, that they were daily called upon to expatiate themselves all over the rigging. The reason of their lofty-mindedness was, that they were high lifted above the petty tumults, carping cares, and paltrinesses of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... mind farther to expatiate, I could enlarge upon several instances of like nature, but this one ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... priests, when the conversation is confined chiefly to the candidate's progress. He then gives to each of them presents of tobacco, and after an offering to Kitshi Manid[-o], with the pipe, they expose the articles contained in their Mid[-e] sacks and explain and expatiate upon the merits and properties of each of the magic objects. The candidate for the first time learns of the manner of preparing effigies, etc., with which to present to the incredulous ocular demonstration of the genuineness ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... executioner's crow-bar on the wheel, in the tightening of the windlasses at the rack—it is not absent, whatever people may say, in Anne of Geierstein, nor even quite lacking in the better parts of Count Robert of Paris. But we must not expatiate on its effects; we must only give a little attention to the means by which ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... England—whose course from its earliest source, near Cirencester, to where it rolls calm, equable, and full, through the magnificent bridges of our splendid metropolis, giving and reflecting beauty,* presents so grand an image of power in repose—it is not now my purpose to speak; nor am I about to expatiate on that still nearer and dearer stream, the pellucid Loddon,—although to be rowed by one dear and near friend up those transparent and meandering waters, from where they sweep at their extremest breadth under the lime-crowned terraces of the Old Park at Aberleigh, to ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... of russling wings. As Bees In spring time, when the Sun with Taurus rides, Poure forth thir populous youth about the Hive 770 In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers Flie to and fro, or on the smoothed Plank, The suburb of thir Straw-built Cittadel, New rub'd with Baume, expatiate and confer Thir State affairs. So thick the aerie crowd Swarm'd and were straitn'd; till the Signal giv'n, Behold a wonder! they but now who seemd In bigness to surpass Earths Giant Sons Now less then ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... a benefited listener to the conversations of these bookish men. Hawthorne says that to hear the old Inspector (whom he has immortalized in the quaint and genial introduction to the "Scarlet Letter") expatiate on fish, poultry, and butcher's-meat, and the most eligible methods of preparing the same for the table, was as appetizing as a pickle or an oyster; and to hear these literary gourmands talk with such gusto of this writer's delightful style, or of that one's delicious humor, or t' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... general use of catalogues of [of books], and the esteem they are in at present, is so well known, that it were to waste paper to expatiate on it."—Gerard ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... that the old man should retain all the consequence of being, in his own opinion, the first to communicate the important intelligence. At the same time, he also determined that in the expected conference he would permit David Deans to expatiate at length upon the proposal, in all its bearings, without irritating him either by interruption or contradiction. This last was the most prudent plan he could have adopted; because, although there were many doubts which David Deans could himself clear up ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... because she loved to hear him talk, and upon no subject could Larry wax so eloquent as upon the foothill country of Alberta. Long after they had secured Larry's new suit and gone on their way through park and boulevard, Larry continued to expatiate upon the glories of Alberta hills and valleys, upon its cool breezes, its flowing rivers and limpid lakes, and always the western rampart of the eternal ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... that while the faddists were perfectly prepared to take the children out of the hands of any parents who happened to be poor, they had not really the courage of their own convictions. They would expatiate upon methods; they could not define their aims; they would take refuge in such meaningless terms as progress or efficiency or success. They were not prepared to say what they wanted to succeed in producing, towards what goal they were progressing ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... directly exposes the popular debasement. It certainly were ridiculous enough to fix on a laboring man and his family, and affect to deplore that he is doomed not to behold the depths and heights of science, not to expatiate over the wide field of history, not to luxuriate among the delights, refinements, and infinite diversities of literature; and that his family are not growing up in a training to every high accomplishment, after the pattern of some family in ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... him a glance of astonished disapproval, and went on to expatiate on what would have been her own conduct in Deleah's place. How she would have listened to Sir Francis with apparent calm, saying nothing, leading him on to his own destruction, ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... happiness which belongs to a virtuous and well-ordered household." Naturally desiring to represent in the most favourable colours the world from which I came, I touched but slightly, though indulgently, on the antiquated and decaying institutions of Europe, in order to expatiate on the present grandeur and prospective pre-eminence of that glorious American Republic, in which Europe enviously seeks its model and tremblingly foresees its doom. Selecting for an example of the social life of the United States that city in which ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... all rot," said the School-master, impatiently. "Country life is ideal only in books. Books do not tell of running for trains through blinding snowstorms; writers do not expatiate on the delights of waking on cold winter nights and finding your piano and parlor furniture afloat because of bursted pipes, with the plumber, like Sheridan at Winchester, twenty miles away. They are dumb on the subject ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... No one but Madame Ozhogin observed my solemn taciturnity, and she inquired anxiously after my health. I replied, of course, with a bitter smile, that I was thankful to say I was perfectly well. Ozhogin continued to expatiate on the subject of their visitor; but noticing that I responded reluctantly, he addressed himself principally to Bizmyonkov, who was listening to him with great attention, when a servant suddenly came in, announcing the arrival ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... met every Saturday night in term time and read essays. They discussed all manner of topics. Sometimes they descended to mere commonplaces—Is a little knowledge a dangerous thing? Is it possible ridentem dicere verum? (which Fitzjames is solitary in denying)—but more frequently they expatiate upon the literary, poetical, ethical, and philosophical problems which can be answered so conclusively in our undergraduate days. Fitzjames self-denyingly approves of the position assigned to mathematics at Cambridge. In literary matters I ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... English had landed twelve days too late," and the Journalist drew a graphic, and purely imaginary, picture of the pathos of the Belgians straining their eyes in vain to the West for the coming of the men in khaki, and unfortunately he let himself expatiate a bit ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... When it became an unavoidable question whether the Union or slavery should live, you chose the Union. The choice may come between the Union and ignorance; and if it does, I have no fear as to which the people will choose. The doctrine of State Rights is a beautiful thing to expatiate upon, but it has been the root of nearly all the evil the country has suffered. However, I believe that this remedy can at once be applied without serious inconvenience from ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... retired in all the irritation of the well-meaning and misunderstood. The Senator, however, who had absolute confidence in his phrase book, saw a deeper significance in the remarkable unwillingness of the people of Bologna to expatiate upon the feature which had given them fame. "The fact is," said he gloomily, restoring his note-book to his inside pocket as we entered the terra-cotta doorway of St. Catarina, "they're not anxious to let a stranger into ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... desired friends, Romans, and countrymen to lend them their ears, or accepted the atrocious accusation of being a young man; and then a Bishop, who had been a schoolmaster himself, delivered an address. It was delightful to see and hear the good man expatiate. I did not believe much in what he said, nor could I reasonably endorse many of his statements; but he did it all so genially and naturally that one felt almost ashamed to question the matter of his discourse. Yet I could not help wondering why it is thought advisable always to say exactly the same ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... made them an opening speech, inveighing against the aggressions of the French, their "contempt of treaties," and "ambitious views for universal monarchy;" and he concluded: "I could expatiate very largely on these affairs, but my heart burns with resentment at their insolence. I think there is no room for many arguments to induce you to raise a considerable supply to enable me to defeat the designs of these troublesome ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... authentic, sources. To these is now added the all-important department of Foreign Affairs; so that, if things remain as they are, the representatives of the people must be content to feed on second-hand information.... Most of us can remember a time when it was a favorite topic with popular agitators to expatiate on the number of lords which a government contained, as if every peer of Parliament wielded an influence necessarily hostile to the liberties of the country. We look down in the present age with contempt on such vulgar prejudices; but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... streams that course over continents, and the tides that swell upon their shores, must render the same service every day; but these sons of God are not held to labour by a bridle so short and rigid. They are endowed with reason and will; they are set at liberty, and permitted to expatiate over a wider field. Their master goes out of sight, and trusts to a renewed, loving heart for the diligent outlay and faithful return of all the talents. The Gospel requires and generates not a legal, but an ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... might expatiate, did the subject require it, on the many and various objects with which the soul will be entertained in those heavenly regions; when I reflect on which, I am apt to wonder at the boldness of some philosophers, who are so struck with admiration at the knowledge of nature, as to thank, in an exulting ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... denial the result of her vigilance for her son's interests, she was the more impelled to expatiate on the folly of leaving a maid of sixteen to herself, to let the household go to rack and ruin; while as to the wench, she might prank herself in her own conceit, but no honest man would soon look at her for a wife, if her father left her to herself, without ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Mrs. Evelyn let John expatiate on her daughter's heroism till steps were heard approaching, and his aunt knocked at the door. Perhaps she was the person most tried when she looked into his bright, dark eyes, and understood the thrill in his voice as he told of Sydney's bravery ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... their safety and thine own.' When I heard this, I was like to die of fright and said to them, 'O my brethren, if generosity were lost, it would not be found save with you and had I a secret, which I feared to divulge, your breasts alone should have the keeping of it.' And I went on to expatiate to them in this sense, till I saw that frankness would profit me more than concealment; so I told them the whole story. When they heard it, they said, 'And is this young man Ali ben Bekkar and this damsel Shemsennehar?' 'Yes,' ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... the even track along hard dusty roads, drawing a heavy burden; now turned free into a cool green field to wander, and feed, and roll about untrammelled. Even so does the mind, weary of consecutive thinking—of thinking in the track and thinking with a purpose—expatiate in the license of ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... be found, Sir W. Hamilton has not failed to tell us. If mere intellectual speculations on the nature and origin of the material universe form a common ground in which the theist, the pantheist, and even the atheist, may alike expatiate, the moral and religious feelings of man—those facts of consciousness which have their direct source in the sense of personality and free will—plead with overwhelming evidence in behalf of a personal God, and of man's relation to Him, as a person to a person. We ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... obscure and unsatisfactory to most of you by reason of us brevity. I shall make amends for that hereafter. In a lecture on 'common sense' I shall try to show what I mean by truths grown petrified by antiquity. In another lecture I shall expatiate on the idea that our thoughts become true in proportion as they successfully exert their go-between function. In a third I shall show how hard it is to discriminate subjective from objective factors in Truth's ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... detested system. I really don't think I could have borne it any longer. It is all very well to say 'be silent on the subject.' They won't let you be silent. They will ask you what you think of it; and will expatiate on slavery as if it were one of the greatest blessings of mankind. 'It's not,' said a hard, bad-looking fellow to me the other day, 'it's not the interest of a man to use his slaves ill. It's damned nonsense that you hear in England.'—I told him quietly that it was not a man's interest to get ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... not altogether sure that that is the right way to look at it," said Mrs. Tolbridge; and then she went on with her sewing, not caring to expatiate on the subject. Her husband appreciated only the advantages of La Fleur, but she knew something of her disadvantages. The work on which she was engaged at that moment would have been done by the maid, had not that young woman's services been so frequently ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... guardians so much personal exertion if only they will let things take their course, those sharp, swift consequences that attend the actions of the impetuous. I might, indeed, if this were a sermon and there were a congregation unable to get away, expatiate on the habit these weapons have of smiting with equal fury the just and the unjust; how you only need to be a little foolish, quite a little foolish, under conditions that seem to force it upon you, and down they come, sure and relentless, and you are smitten with a thoroughness that leaves ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... rides. Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank, The suburb of their straw-built citadel, New rubbed with balm, expatiate, and confer Their state-affairs: so thick the airy crowd Swarmed and were straitened; till, the signal given, Behold a wonder! They but now who seemed In bigness to surpass Earth's giant sons, Now less than smallest ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... consciousness of resistance, or dead strain, the other permitting movement, and giving the consciousness of the unobstructed sweep of the limbs or members. Whatever else may be in space, this freedom to move, to soar, to expatiate (in contrast to being hemmed in, obstructed, held fast), is an essential part of the conception, and is formed out of our active or moving sensibilities. Now, as far as movement is concerned, we must be in one of two states;—we must be putting forth energy ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... market-town appeared at the distance of three or four miles, when Crabshaw, having no longer the fear of hobgoblins before his eyes, and being moreover cheered by the sight of a place where he hoped to meet with comfortable entertainment, began to talk big, to expatiate on the folly of being afraid, and finally set all danger at defiance; when all of a sudden he was presented with an opportunity of putting in practice those new-adopted maxims. In an opening between two lanes, they perceived a gentleman's coach stopped by two highwaymen ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... English, to their country, to their institutions and character. Napoleon had been described to her as a barbarian, taking interest only in warfare and every thing connected with it; and now she found him to be an admirer of the English poets, and heard him expatiate enthusiastically on Ossian, some of whose most magnificent verses he recited to her in a ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... have delighted to expatiate on the beauties of Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' and to linger with admiration over the lofty utterances expressed in his poem. Though conscious of his inability to do justice to the sublimest of poets and ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... southwest fanned the warm cheeks of Margery, as she sat, resting from the labors of the day, with le Bourdon at her side, speaking of the pleasures of a residence in such a spot. The youth was eloquent, for he felt all that he said, and the maiden was pleased. The young man could expatiate on bees in a way to arrest any one's attention; and Margery delighted to hear him relate his adventures with these little creatures; his successes, ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... unwilling to be near Him, incapable of receiving the truest nearness and blessedness of His presence, and sometimes desirous to hustle Him out of our thoughts, and, if we could, out of our world, rather than to expatiate in the calm sunlight ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... strain did the Squire, guiding his horses with strong, dexterous hand, expatiate to his son; the crisp air rushing past them, making their faces glow with the tingling blood until, burning the ground, they dashed up the avenue that leads to the white mansion of Pulwick, and halted amidst a cloud of steam ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... be carefully perused and the chattel made to turn round and round, to walk backwards and forwards, to show his teeth and his muscle, whilst the African up on the rostrum would with loud voice and profuse gesture point out every line of beauty on a lithe body and expatiate on the full ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... for this kind of love is embodied in the second Pauline. She is not the woman her lover imagines her to be, but far older and more experienced than her lover; who has known long ago what love was; who always liked to be loved, who therefore suffers her lover to expatiate as wildly as he pleases; but whose life is quite apart from him, enduring him with pleasurable patience, criticising him, wondering how he can be so excited. There is a dim perception in the lover's phrases ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... indulge his natural emotions in purity,—is added an especial interest in Italy, the mother of our language and our laws, our greatest benefactress in the gifts of genius, the garden of the world, in which our best thoughts have delighted to expatiate, but over whose bowers now hangs a perpetual veil of sadness, and whose noblest plants are doomed to removal,—for, if they cannot bear their ripe and perfect fruit in another climate, they are not permitted to lift their heads to heaven ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... complain that their wise books lie unread by the multitude, if they persist in overlooking the nature of the human mind, and addressing themselves to what they think it ought to be instead of what it really is. They expatiate admiringly upon the simplicity and vividness of the style of Herodotus, and upon the classic taste of the Athenian public in appreciating him; and then, forgetting that the public of our own day are quick to admire the same traits, turn to their desks ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... are called the "moulders of public opinion." Writing in our easy chairs or making suave speeches over the walnuts and wine, we take scrupulous care to expatiate on this phase of our function. But the real question is: who "moulds" us? for assuredly the hand that moulds the ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... affect you; yet, for my own sake, as well as yours, I referred you to Dr. Bartlett, for the particulars of some parts of it, upon which I could not expatiate. ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... here, both in the word 'access' and in that other one 'stand.' 'The grace' is supposed as some ample space into which a man is led, and where he can continue, stand, and expatiate. Or, we may say, it is regarded as a palace or treasure-house into which we can enter. Now, if we take that great New Testament word 'grace,' and ponder its meanings, we find that they run something in this fashion. The central thought, grand and marvellous, which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... converted into Coal. It would be too long a work to describe the several kinds of pores which I met withall, and by this means discovered in several other Vegetable bodies; nor is it my present design to expatiate upon Instances of the same kind, but rather to give a Specimen of as many kinds as I have had opportunity as yet of observing, reserving the prosecution and enlarging on particulars till a more fit opportunity; and in prosecution of this design, I ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... statesmanship, or proud political position attained through the rigid observance of the ethical rules of personal purity, are nothing to the rank and file, the polloi, who can never hope to reach those elevations in this world; as well expatiate upon the virtues of Croesus to a man who will never go beyond his day's wages, or expect the homeless to become ecstatic over the magnificence of Nabuchodonosor's Babylonian palace. Such extremes possess no influence over the ordinary mind, they are the mere vanities ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... dealer had seized his arm, and, hurrying him into the store, pulled down a coat, on the merits of which he began to expatiate with voluble tongue. ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... (unknown to her) plead her excuse; but he apprehended Miss Woodley's intention, and evidently shunned her. Mr. Sandford was now the only person to whom she could speak of Miss Milner, and the delight he took to expatiate on her faults, was more sorrow to her friend, than not to speak of her at all. She, therefore, sat a silent spectator, waiting with dread for the time when she, who now scorned her advice, would fly to ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... The noise from the street was diminished at this height; no possible tramplers could establish themselves above your head; the air was bound to be purer than that of inferior strata; finally, one had the flat roof whereon to sit or expatiate in sunny weather. True that a gentle rain of soot was wont to interfere with one's comfort out there in the open, but such minutiae are easily forgotten in the fervour of domestic description. It was undeniable that on a fine day one enjoyed ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... Satterlee's contentment. He confided to Skiddy that he had never been so happy. With glistening eyes he would discourse on "these simple people," "these good hearts," "this lovely and uncontaminated paradise, where evil seems never to have set its hand," and expatiate generally on the beauty, charm, and tranquillity of Samoan life. He dreaded the time, he said, when a ruthless civilization ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... out-of-door enjoyments in Paris are so well known, and have been so frequently described—and my objects of research being altogether of a very different complexion—you will not, I conclude, scold me if I cease to expatiate upon this topic, but direct your attention to others. Not however but that I think you may wish to know my sentiments about the principal ARCHITECTURAL BUILDINGS of Paris—as you are yourself not only a lover, but a judge, of these matters—and therefore the better qualified to criticise ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... hospitality—and my own sensations, which were an agreeable compound of those of every one else—each and all were perfect in their respective ways. But the creme de la creme, the essence of the whole affair, that on which the tongue of the poet and the pen of the romance-writer must alike rejoice to expatiate, was the conduct of Mr. Frampton; how he was seized, at one and the same moment, with two separate, irresistible, and apparently incompatible manias, one for kissing everybody, and the other for lifting and transporting ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... authors and commentators are wont to take Magna Charta clause by clause, and word by word, and letter by letter. They linger lovingly and proudly over every jot and tittle of that splendid instrument. And you will indulge me this Communion night of all nights of the year if I expatiate still more lovingly and proudly on that great Covenant which our Lord has sealed to us again to-day, and has written again to-day on the walls of our hearts. Moses made haste as soon as the old Charter was read over to him, and nothing shall delay us till ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... though foolish, was not intended for more than respect, and our Bishops did not desire it; at which he smiled. Then he went on to expatiate upon what he had seen in some of our churches (probably while on duty as Government servant): the display, as it seemed to him, so like this; the pomp, as he thought it, so fine, like this; the bowing and prostrating, and even on the part of those who did not do ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... supply his maxims and reflections; all the inward passions and affections of mankind, to furnish his characters: and all the outward forms and images of things for his descriptions: but wanting yet an ampler sphere to expatiate in, he opened a new and boundless walk for his imagination, and created a world for himself in the invention of fable. That which Aristotle calls "the soul of poetry," was first breathed into it by Homer, I shall begin ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... the number of six thousand. Lord Nairn, the younger brother of the Marquis, also joined in the undertaking. Of these distinguished Jacobites, separate lives will hereafter be given in this work: it therefore becomes unnecessary any further to expatiate upon them here. Of some, whose biography does not present features sufficiently marked to constitute a distinct narrative, some traits may ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... for half an hour with astonishing endurance and resourcefulness, but it became always more apparent that he was not captivating his audience. He had to laugh at his own humour and expatiate on his own thrills. Finally a silence fell upon the three, broken ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... induced to listen to such a proposal, as may place before them a certain liberal competence, with the opportunity of rising to independence in a sphere where the number of competitors would be so low as to render final success less precarious. It is needless to expatiate more amply upon the benefits which must accrue from an appointment of this nature, which would impose but a trifling additional burden on the crown, since it is extremely possible that a barrister ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... the place to expatiate on the merits of the Latin play; but the assertion may be hazarded without much risk, that both the original and Thornton's version are, taken as wholes, considerably superior to any of the imitations. Indeed, the character of Alcmena, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... alone Beholds, nor half thy brightness can reveal Through those dim organs, whose corporeal touch O'ershadoweth thy pure essence. Yet, my Muse, If Fortune call thee to the task, wait thou Thy favourable seasons; then, while fear And doubt are absent, through wide nature's bounds Expatiate with glad step, and choose at will Whate'er bright spoils the florid earth contains, Whate'er the waters, or the liquid air, 300 To manifest unblemish'd Beauty's praise, And o'er the breasts of mortals to extend Her gracious empire. Wilt thou to the isles Atlantic, to ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... is the best of times. You will be eloquent on the hustings, in order that Ellen may read your speeches in the newspaper. You must be so broken in to making love, that it will come quite naturally to you to do so to every voter's wife or daughter. With what wonderful effect you will expatiate on the patriotism which tears you away from your affianced bride, to undertake the arduous duties of a champion of the popular cause, or an inveterate enemy of the new Poor Law. But, really, there is no time to lose, my dear fellow; ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... of no party, I shall offend all parties: never mind! My words, at least, are more sincere and hearty Than if I sought to sail before the wind. He who has nought to gain can have small art: he Who neither wishes to be bound nor bind, May still expatiate freely, as will I, Nor give my ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... shew off his rhetorical powers in ingenious arguments, or in pathetic appeals. Many of his scenes have altogether the appearance of a lawsuit, where two persons, as the parties in the litigation, (with sometimes a third for a judge,) do not confine themselves to the matter in hand, but expatiate in a wide field, accusing their adversaries or defending themselves with all the adroitness of practised advocates, and not unfrequently with all the windings and subterfuges of pettifogging sycophants. In this way the poet endeavoured to make his poetry ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... these chickens upon pistachios; eat, for thou hast never eaten their like." "O my lord," replied my brother, "they are indeed first rate." Then the host began motioning with his hand as though he were giving my brother a mouthful; and ceased not to enumerate and expatiate upon the various dishes to the hungry man whose hunger waxt still more violent, so that his soul lusted after a bit of bread, even a barley scone.[FN690] Quoth the Barmecide, "Didst thou ever taste anything more delicious than the seasoning of these dishes?"; and quoth my brother, "Never, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... at once into the library, where Doctor Joyce was spelling over the "Rubbleford Mercury," while Mrs. Joyce sat opposite to him, knitting a fancy jacket for her youngest but one. He was hardly inside the door before he began to expatiate in the wildest manner on the subject of the beautiful deaf and dumb girl. If ever man was in love with a child at first sight, he was that man. As an artist, as a gentleman of refined tastes, and as the softest-hearted of male human ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... the Dominion that you here are concerned with. No doubt an Imperial Conference raises one or two very delicate questions, as to whether common citizenship is to be observed, or whether the relations between India and the Colonies should remain what they are. I am not going to expatiate upon that to-night, but it did occur to me in reading all these proceedings that the part of Hamlet was rather omitted, because India after all is the only real Empire. You there have an immense Dominion, an almost countless ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... mere act of the memory. She thought him therefore a very fine gentleman; and such as consider what powerful ingredients a good figure, fine cloaths, and fortune, are in that character, will easily forgive her. Mr Thornhill, notwithstanding his real ignorance, talked with ease, and could expatiate upon the common topics of conversation with fluency. It is not surprising then that such talents should win the affections of a girl, who by education was taught to value an appearance in herself, and consequently to set a value upon it ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... up the dignity of human nature, and expatiate upon its original perfections, must look upon it through magic glasses: to some perceptions at least, it presents even in its best estate a picture of such abortive aims, such woful short-comings, such clouded ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... the pupils are too well trained ever to exploit themselves, their school, or their work. The pictures, the statuary, the fittings, and the equipment are all of the best, and, hence, show for themselves without exploitation. To teachers and pupils it would seem a mark of ill-breeding to expatiate upon their own things. Such a thing is simply not done in this school. The auditorium is a stately, commodious, and beautiful room, and everybody connected with the school accepts it as a matter of course with no boastful comment. Anything approaching ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... being depended upon to tell them all about civil war or civil government who would have to be excused by his wife for some such reason, upon which there would be a chatter of regret and the meeting would fall into a conference upon matters in general. While the gentlemen would "expatiate and confer" with one another as to what breeding would produce the most wrinkles on a sheep's back (thus giving the greatest wool-bearing surface), the ladies would devise new wrinkles to make use of it. And usually the ones who produced ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... alike in theology, morals, and politics, appeared to him to sap the foundations of every higher principle in human nature, he was led by the whole tenour of his mind to dwell upon the existence in the soul of perceptions not derivable from the senses, and to expatiate on the immutable distinctions of right and wrong. Goodness, freed from all debasing associations of interest and expedience, such as Hobbes sought to attach to it, was the same, he was well assured, as it had existed from all eternity in the mind ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... was agreeable to the best apprehensions we are able to form upon the subject, viz. "That they who are accounted worthy of that resurrection, shall be as the angels of God in heaven." I lay a stress upon this reserve, because it repels the suspicion of enthusiasm: for enthusiasm is wont to expatiate upon the condition of the departed, above all other subjects, and with a wild particularity. It is moreover a topic which is always listened to with greediness. The teacher, therefore, whose principal purpose is to draw upon himself attention, is sure to be full of it. ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... send Esther with scraps of meat and bread and milk to the unfortunate rooks that Mary had so unmercifully forgotten. "I'll have no more pets," she'd say, "Miss Mary won't look after them, and all the trouble falls upon me. See these poor cats, how they come mewing round my skirts." She loved to expatiate on her inexhaustible affection for dumb animals, and she continued an anecdotal discourse till, suddenly wearying of it, she would break off and speak to Esther ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... that it may, at first, be attracted by the defects of the beloved, and later repelled by them. Maurice loved Eleanor for her defects. Once, when he and Edith were helping Mrs. Houghton weed her garden, he stopped grubbing, and sat down in the gold and bronze glitter of coreopsis, to expatiate upon the exquisiteness of the defects. Her wonderful mind: "She doesn't talk, because she is always thinking; her ideas are way over my head!" Her funny timidity: "She wants me to take care of her!" Her love: "She's—it sounds absurd!—but she's jealous, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... conversation about Tregear was interdicted in the presence of his sister. He could say nothing as to the Runnymede hunt and the two thunderbolts which had fallen on him, as Major Tifto was not a subject on which he could expatiate in the presence of his father. He asked a few questions about the shooting, and referred with great regret to his absence ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
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