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More "Nonsense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pay in solid pudding instead of empty praise; and adhere, at least in this instance, to the good old system of rewarding their champions with places and pensions, instead of puffing their bad poetry, and endeavouring to cram their nonsense down the throats of all the loyal and ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... rallying point at Highgate, and consequently acquainted with the earliest forms of the poem. The review is an unfavourable one, and Coleridge is told in it that he is the dog-in-the-manger of literature, and that his poem is proof of the fact that he can write better nonsense poetry than any man in England. The writer is particularly wroth with what he considers the wilful indefiniteness of the author, and in proof of a charge of a desire not to let the public into the secret of the poem, and of a conscious endeavour to mystify the reader, he deliberately accuses ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... who represented the interests of the allied corporations, had Big Tim on the carpet. The young man had not been out of Harvard more than three years, but he did not let any nonsense about fair play stand in his way. In spite of the clean-cut look of him—he was broadshouldered and tall, with an effect of decision in the square cleft chin that would some day degenerate into fatness—Ned Merrill played the game ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... "Forget that nonsense about selling this place," Thompson said roughly. That grated on him. He felt a sense of guilt, of responsibility too long neglected. "Where I'm going I shall be supplied by the government with all I need. I've made some money. ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and are you not laughing too? Do you take me for a fool, telling me that you are going away? 'I am going to start to-night!'" she said, mimicking his tones. "Stuff and nonsense! Would you talk like that if you were really going away from your Naqui? You would cry, like the booby that ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... "Bah! what superfine nonsense I am writing!" exclaimed Buckingham, pushing his note-book aside, but continuing to sit before his fire ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... to a want of candour, not uncommon in this eminent man towards those from whom he disagreed, he will not even allow that he had any 'patrons'[516] who have adorned the doctrine of Christ. 'His language is barbarous, unscriptural, and unintelligible.' 'It is most sublime nonsense, inimitable bombast, fustian not to be paralleled.' Bishop Warburton also refers to him in the most unqualified[517] terms of contempt. William Blake, most mystical of poets and painters, delighted, as might well be ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... This nonsense, throwing back my head With light complacent laugh, I found Suddenly all the midnight round One fire. The dome of heaven had stood As made up of a multitude Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack Of ripples infinite and black, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... deal of nonsense is being talked about our coal-mines. I should like therefore to throw a little helpful light on the subject of nationalisation. Speaking as an owner and not as a miner (I have at the present moment at least six ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... nonsense! A few of the ringleaders, Schuyler, and Hancock, and Washington, and a few such, they will hang of course,—but for the rest,—we shall have to take the oath anew, and swallow a few duties with ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... I saw anything! I knew from the first it was all nonsense. My father had told me so a score of times. But having been reared in the superstitious Galloway of the ancient days—well, there are certain chills and creeps for which a man is not responsible, inexplicable twitchings of the hairy scalp of his ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... Edward; "what nonsense that is! I'd look well being ashamed of any one that Minturn talked with. But, Bob, I can't go to-night, nor any other night just about this time; because I made a promise that I'd do something else, at exactly ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... listening to a lecture from Temperance, embellished by such elegancies as "Stuff and nonsense!" and "Listen to reason!" which ended up at last with "Lancaster and Derby!" and Faith came slowly in, with her everlasting handkerchief ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... to meet her brother, looking forward with a sister's satisfaction to nursing his recovery, and feeling (for she had a heart, after all) as if it was a renewal of the days, which she regarded with a tenderness mixed with contempt, when all was confidence between the brother and sister, the days of nonsense and romance. She hoped that now poor Philip, who had acted hastily on his romance, and ruined his own prospects for her sake in his boyish days, had a chance of having it all made up to him, and reigning at Redclyffe according to ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was addicted to talking a good deal of nonsense, and she frequently wearied her listeners; but there was a certain shrewdness in her, and at times she got near the truth. Indeed, her companion afterward decided that she had done so in this case. Ida Stirling had met many rising young men, ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... some of its contents, had also the motive of gratitude for standing by its author, as one of the poems was a warm and, I need not add, well-deserved panegyric on himself. We were, however, too far gone in nonsense for even this eulogy, in which we both so heartily agreed, to stop us. The opening line of the poem was, as well as I can recollect, "When Rogers o'er this labour bent;" and Lord Byron undertook to read it aloud;—but he found it impossible to get beyond the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... mocking, as if she were laughing at something all the time.—Poor, dear child! could she not talk as she liked? It was a great blessing she could be bright, poor lamb, with such a parting before her!—She was so grown-up, and patronising, and superior!—Tut! tut! Nonsense! Peggy had come from a boarding-school, and her ways were different from theirs—that was all. They must not take stupid notions, but be kind and friendly, and make the poor girl ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... as if it would lift one up to the clouds, but before we got back to the little house it had quite fallen, and all was as still as in a desert, except now and then the wild cry of the grouse and black-cock. Bob'm mad with spirits, and talked nonsense all the way home. Not too dark to see the beautiful outline of the ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... "Do not talk nonsense," said the priest. "It would be far more worthy of you and of me that you should open your heart to me. There is now that between us which ought never to have come between us—a secret. This secret has subsisted for sixteen ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... and the Scotch Preacher happened in here together and we fell to discussing, I hardly know how, for we usually talk the neighbourhood chat of the Starkweathers, of Horace and of Charles Baxter, we fell to discussing old Izaak Walton—and the nonsense (as a scientific age knows it to be) which he sometimes ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... tales," he answered, "and they are not nonsense. Do not you ever read the history of your country as it was many hundreds of years ago, before this ugly thing they call civilization weakened the sinews of our race and besmirched the very face of duty? Do you not like to read of the ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... watching and waiting in his attitude, like the runner on the mark, or like the burden-bearer lifting a great weight, and Byrne gathered, in some mysterious manner, the impression that Barry sent through his hands and into the body of Cumberland a continual stream of nervous strength—an electric thing. Nonsense, of course. And it was nonsense, also, to think that the huge dog which lay staring up into the face of the master understood all this affair much better than the practiced mind of the physician. Yet the illusion held with Randall Byrne in ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... past life is etched into the shells they have a memory of incidents in connection with these relatives, which facilitates the deception. But as the intelligence has fled, they are of course unable to give any true counsel, and that accounts for the inane, goody-goody nonsense of ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... three paces away from her. His eyes weren't sorrowful eyes, or friendly eyes; they were just shiftily eager eyes. "Look here," he said. "It's all nonsense.... Elly, old girl; let's—let's ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the power pack on his horse to electrically warm his protective clothing and the horse's wrappings, but there was no necessity of that yet. He smiled a little as he always did when he thought of his grandfather's remarks about such "new-fangled nonsense". ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the imagination of the vulgar, and which gave those whose employment did not admit of their being present in the daytime, an opportunity of attending them. The speeches delivered at these meetings have been well characterized as "furious nonsense;" but at the same time they were calculated to work mischief in the community. Happily, however, the Whigs were in office, and for their own interest's sake they restrained these ebullitions. Had there been a Conservative government, possibly the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sweetness of which the Syrens might envy, warbles the harmonious song in praise of the young adventurer; and again, the next day, or, perhaps the next hour, with fiery eyes, wrinkled brows, and foaming lips, roars forth treason and nonsense in a political argument with some fair ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... cannot give what we haven't got, and that's common sense! We're dry here, and if it's bad luck for one it's bad luck for all. The glass says rain," I went on; "we'll wait for it together and have done with all this nonsense." ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... the glorious institution of sleep, comes a break in the narrative again. These absurd young people are safely tucked away now, their heads full of glowing nonsense, indeed, but the course of events at any rate is safe from any fresh developments through their activities for the next eight hours or more. They are both sleeping healthily you will perhaps be ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... clothes into a travelling bag and barged toward the door, giving his wife a quick kiss and an equally quick explanation. He didn't bother to call the airport. He meant to be on the next plane east, and no nonsense about it.... ...
— And All the Earth a Grave • Carroll M. Capps (AKA C.C. MacApp)
... your uncle and that on one occasion, when you were introduced into a certain house, you sat the whole evening with your back to the hostess and that she was so upset that she cried at the insult! What awful nonsense! What fools could possibly believe such things!' Well, and what do you think? A year after I quarrelled with this same friend, and in his farewell letter to me he wrote, 'You who killed your own uncle! You who were not ashamed ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... that excellent body of respectably educated New England seamen, from the flower of whom the officers used to be recruited. Yet I found them, in many cases, very agreeable and intelligent companions, with less nonsense about them than landsmen usually have, eschewers of fine-spun theories, delighting in square and tangible ideas, but occasionally infested with prejudices that stuck to their brains like barnacles to a ship's bottom. I never could flatter myself that I was a general favorite with them. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... length they are scarcely sensible? In the latter case, if it be said as before, that this love is the foundation of all loves, and that into it are collected all joys and delights, the positions are neither agreed to nor acknowledged, and possibly it is asserted that they are nonsense or incomprehensible mysteries. From these considerations it is evident, that primitive marriage love bears a resemblance to love truly conjugial, and presents it to view in a certain image. The reason of which is, because then the love ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... unprejudiced judgment, and give them their due, Nor believe all the lies, which perhaps he had seen, In that vile publication, that base magazine,{6} Which had dared to impeach his most chaste lucubrations, Of obscenity, nonsense, and such accusations. Nay, that impudent work had asserted downright, That chalk differ'd from cheese, and that black wasn't white; But he hoped he might meet with his majesty's favor;" And thus, hemming and hawing, he ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... now, and it will be morning here again to-morrow. 'Good times and bad times, and all times pass over;'—I learnt that lesson out of old Bewick's vignettes, and it has stood me in good stead this many a year, and shall now. Die? Nonsense. I take more killing than that comes to. So for one more bout with old Dame Fortune. If she throws me again, why, I'll get up again, as I have any time these fifteen years. Mark's right. I'll stay here and work till I make a hit, or luck runs dry, and then home and settle; and, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... worries them," the woman replied sharply, "but they an't none like city boys, an' I'd ruther have 'em the way they air than to come pesterin' with questions like Hamilton does you. I don't set any sort o' stock in it, an' I don't encourage him in sech nonsense." ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... all observers" seems to talk nonsense, for marriage in the seraglio does not hinge on the submission of one wife to one husband, but on a plurality of wives that English and German women have only endured in certain historic cases. In both western countries marriage has its roots in the fidelity of one man and ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... may be; but if you want to set a fellow up when he's kinder run down, there's nothing like a fishing trip to Labrador, 'specially if he's been bothering himself with studying, and writing, and such like. There's nothing like fish chowders, hard bunks, and sea fog to take that nonsense out of him. Now, this chap," (the Skipper here gave me a thrust in the ribs by way of designation,) "if I could have him down with me beyond sunset for two or three months, would come back as hearty as a Bay ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... "What nonsense!" cried Gissing. "The smell of wet, healthy puppies? Nothing is more agreeable. You are cold-blooded: I don't believe you are fond of puppies. Think of their wobbly black noses. Consider how pink is the little cleft between their toes and the ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... close by his captive and began to strip off his clothes. The man was inclined to resist, but a sharp prick of Frank's knife told him that his captor was in no mind to stand any nonsense and he lay quiet. It was hard work because the man was heavy and the quarters were cramped. The coat had to be cut off in places because Frank did not dare to untie his prisoner's hands. But at last the clothes were off, and Frank ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... "Nonsense," said Albert Edward. "I have never known what fear is—not since the Armistice, anyhow. I am one of the bravest men I have ever met. What are you doing with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... open'd. (12mo, 1741.) On 1 December, 1759, there was brought out at Drury Lane a most insipid alteration of Oroonoko by Dr. Hawkesworth, who omitted all Southerne's lighter fare and inserted serious nonsense of his own. Garrick was the Oroonoko and Mrs. Cibber Imoinda. Although Hawkesworth's version was not tolerated, the underplot was none the less pruned in later productions to such an extent that ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... Chrysostom [*Hom. xliv in the Opus Imperfectum falsely ascribed to St. John Chrysostom] says: "If there is a reason for swearing, it seems a small thing to swear by God, but a great thing to swear by the Gospels. To those who think thus, it must be said: Nonsense! the Scriptures were made for God's sake, not God for the sake of the Scriptures." Now men of all conditions and at all times are wont to swear by God. Much more, therefore, is it lawful to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... my misfortune! I could have said it the first time I saw you. Really, I had seen you before; I had seen you in imagination; you seemed almost an old friend. So what I say is not mere gallantry and compliments and nonsense—I can't talk that way, I don't know how, and I wouldn't, to you, if I could. It's as serious as such words can be. I feel as if I knew you and knew what a beautiful, admirable woman you are. I shall know better, perhaps, some day, but I have a general notion now. You are just the woman I have ...
— The American • Henry James
... that I go into exile, and that I suffer, than that so evil a priest enter the cathedral contrary to the will of his Majesty—who, even for but one of the exceptions that I have made, is unwilling that the canonical institution be given to him. It is a piece of nonsense to assert that the cabildo must take charge of the government, for I am not excommunicated or suspended. Already I have appointed governors for the archbishop, and I pray your Grace not to give me any counsel in such things, for I do not wish it. It will seem an admirable thing, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... there was perhaps only one truth for which he was quite unprepared: he would have been quite unprepared to learn that Kirstie hated him. He thought maid and master were well matched; hard, bandy, healthy, broad Scots folk, without a hair of nonsense to the pair of them. And the fact was that she made a goddess and an only child of the effete and tearful lady; and even as she waited at table her hands would sometimes itch for my ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "I in love! I never had the time, nor have I the time to-day for all this nonsense. Will ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... Margaret, "that's jist Larry over agin. The pore lad was allus full of his nonsense ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... is a lie, and a bad one; I'm sorry that I have nothing better ready.' Item (6): My own adamantine conviction that I stood near by some mystery, which was about to be a big mystery, and which would pay me to pursue. 'A fine bundle of nonsense,' I hear you say; 'as silly a flight of a vaporous brain as ever man conceived'—but stay your words awhile; remember that one who is bred up at the keyhole lets himself, if he be wise, be moved by his impulses, and first opinions. He does not quit them ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... Monk in a box, or almost succeeding in keeping Charles the First's head on. It was the prisoner of the Chateau d'If cutting himself out of the sack fifty feet under water (I mention the novels I like best myself—novels without love or talking, or any of that sort of nonsense, but containing plenty of fighting, escaping, robbery, and rescuing)—cutting himself out of the sack, and swimming to the island of Monte Cristo. O Dumas! O thou brave, kind, gallant old Alexandre! I hereby ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a "roundabout," scarcely reaching to his waist, but it abounded with pockets, as did the vest which it partly inclosed. His trousers were coarse, thick, and comfortable, and his large boots were never touched by blacking, Nick's father having no belief in such nonsense, but sticking ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... the top of his voice. Then the bell rang violently, and all of the boys but Bert Sharp hurried up stairs, Grayson not even taking the trouble to look behind him. In the scramble toward the seats Will Palmer found a chance to whisper to Ned Johnston, "There's no nonsense about him, eh?" ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... for joy. He had to ask her a good many words at first, and often the meaning of one and another; but he seldom asked a question twice; and as his understanding was far ahead of his reading, he was able to test a conjectured meaning by the sense or nonsense it made of ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... old man said. Still harping on the hay—the hay which doesn't amount to anything and cannot be of any real help. It's sheer nonsense to think that the hay in that stack is enough to feed the flocks of a whole district. There is no use talking about it I will not throw that tiny mouthful to all the four winds. It will do no good if divided among so many, but it is a comfort to me, to me alone. No, I will ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... with your trite nonsense," interrupted Will Munson, impatiently. "I'd consult you on a point of law in preference to most of the gray-beards, but I was a fool to speak of this affair. And yet ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... sent Polly's basket over to the school, at an early hour, Polly preferring to walk, several of the girls having called for her. So they all, with Jasper, who was going as far as the corner with them, set out amidst a chatter of merry nonsense. ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... went to the Lower Rooms; wore my sprigged muslin robe with blue trimmings—plain black shoes—appeared to much advantage; but was strangely harassed by a queer, half-witted man, who would make me dance with him, and distressed me by his nonsense." ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... girls," he whispered to Denham, "you must be entirely at your ease with them, remember, they are not fine, they have no nonsense about them, just as girls should be; if they were otherwise, I, for one, would not own them. I have no idea of girls giving ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... be "dressing-up"; for the sailor-game had ended in that nonsense of a kiss because they had not thought of dressing properly ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... ever heard of fifty men against one, and he a cripple? The first who touches him I strike dead. A heretic! Pooh! nonsense. He is but a poor travelling peddler with his pack. See, here is the pack to speak for itself. For shame to mar a merry holiday in this unmannerly fashion! No; I will not give him up! Ye are no better than a pack of howling, ravening wolves. I am the Lord of Chad, and I will ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... invaded the twilight realm of psycho-pathological phenomena, and refers the reader for further information to Lecons sur le systeme nerveux, faites par J. M. Charcot, and Etudes cliniques sur l'hystero-epilepsie ou grande hysterie, par le Dr. Richer. As a man is always in danger of talking nonsense in dealing with a subject concerning which his knowledge is superficial, I shall not undertake to pronounce upon the validity of the theory which is here advanced. The play is an inquiry into the significance and authenticity of miracles. Incidentally the theme ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... I see of our colored regiments, and the more I converse with our soldiers, the more convinced I am that upon them we must ultimately rely as the principle source of our strength in these latitudes. It is perfect nonsense for any one to attempt to talk away the broad fact, evident as the sun at noonday, that these men are capable not only of making good soldiers, but the very best of soldiers. The Third Louisiana Native Guard, Colonel Nelson, are encamped here, and a more orderly, disciplined, robust, and ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... Carnarvon, helped the Liberals to defeat them.... We shall have a great fight in Committee; but I still trust in a reasonable majority for not pushing amendments too far, and then the Bill will be a great triumph of sense over nonsense.... We had Dickens Saturday and Sunday—very agreeable ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... seen it 'appen over and over. But the women can tyke an 'int quicker 'n what we can. They won't stand the nonsense men do. Only they 'aven't got a fair chawnce even to agitate fur their rights. As I wus comin' up ere, I 'eard a man sayin', "Look at this big crowd. W'y, we're all men! If the women want the vote, w'y ain't they here to s'y so?" ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... She was seated at the further end of the room, looking very sulky; and I went up and took her arm, and brought her down to the place where the Duchesses were. "Oh, not there!" said Jemmy, trying to break away. "Nonsense, my dear," says I: "you are missis, and this is your place." Then going up to her ladyship the Duchess, says I, "Me and my missis are most proud of the ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... literature's another proposition. Howland says it's one of the cases where an idea might seem original and striking if one didn't happen to be able to trace its descent. And this is straight out of bosh—by Pellerin. ... Yes: Pellerin. It seems that everything in the article that isn't pure nonsense is just Pellerinism. Howland thinks poor Winterman must have been tremendously struck by Pellerin's writings, and have lived too much out of the world to know that they've become the text-books of modern thought. ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... being so. This is perhaps rather sweeping but it is more or less so. People influence me never by what they tell me but by the general impression they make on me and that I see them make on other people. I believe what I just wrote is nonsense. I only mean to say that I am only intolerant of intolerance. I think the ordinary rules of good behavior demand a certain amount of tolerance and with that any milieu is possible. I am sure of a few things ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... Colonel proceeded, wondering whether such abominable nonsense was interesting the child, whose gaze had now begun to reach out to sea. In reality Rupert was thrilled, and did not like to disturb the flow of a story so affecting. But the strength of his feelings was too much. He was obliged to suggest ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... sentiments of gratitude not being universal, nor even common. As your affection for me can only proceed from your experience and conviction of my fondness for you (for to talk of natural affection is talking nonsense), the only return I desire is, what it is chiefly your interest to make me; I mean your invariable practice of virtue, and your indefatigable pursuit of knowledge. Adieu! and be persuaded that I shall love you extremely, while you deserve it; ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Leslie, airily. "Now march, as I told you, and be quick about it, or I shall be compelled to freshen your way for you with another shot. I know all about you, my good man, and I am therefore not at all disposed to put up with any nonsense. Forward!" ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... cattle to that bit of pasture, because the stepping-stones made it a thoroughfare, and that bull had been getting more savage lately, and he could not always persuade people that it was dangerous to pass near him; but Gowrie had said it was nonsense, and so forth. Well, you see, I'm not very fond of old Gowrie, and when I saw how meekly Geordie submitted to him, I felt provoked, and began to speak a little strongly, as we middies sometimes do—swore, in fact. And if Geordie didn't ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... "Nonsense, old man," said Cleary. "You've got the fever on you again. It's in your blood. When it gets out, you'll ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... that compounds and elevates one's ideas," says Mr. Snivel, holding his glass in the light, and squinting his blood-shotten eyes, the lids of which he has scarce power to keep open. "Drink, George-drink! You have had your day-why let such nonsense trouble you? The whole city is in love with the girl. Her beauty makes her capricious; if the old Judge has got her, let him keep her. Indeed, I'm not so sure that she doesn't love him, and (well, I always laugh when I think of it), it is a well laid down principle among us lawyers, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... Perhaps dreaming nonsense is also a subject for the inquiries of psychology. At the moment the poor man's imaginary sufferings were positively frightful, and he awoke with a gasp. He had always secretly dreaded growing fat, he had always felt a horror of anything like singing or speaking ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... crazed!" she exclaimed, in a voice of despair. "Why, dear child, there is not a shadow of foundation for this nonsense. I am heartily glad at the thought of seeing my cousin once more, and all the gladder that he brings a wife with him. Will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... angry at such nonsense, and said, "Be assured I do not fear that Mr Powell will desert us, but he said this morning there ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey
... the contest. "I confess," said he, laughing, "that I was one of the hot Southerners who shared the notion that one man of the South could whip three Yankees; but the first year of the war pretty effectually knocked that nonsense out of us, and, to tell the truth, ever since that time we military men have generally seen that it was only a question how long it would take to wear our army out and destroy it. We have seen that there was no real ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... firm hands on the encircling arms. "Now, look here," she said, shortly, "it's about time to stop this nonsense. There's nothing I can promise you. I must have time to think. I've got not only myself, but the children to think for. And I've only got till ten o'clock, so I ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... is, but it's creepy, nice nonsense. Because of the story. Once there were two murderers at Swire village, and one turned upon the other and told the secret of the murder and got his friend caught and hanged. And the bad murderer was paid a ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... anything about this to your uncle just now," she insisted. "I am going to take you up to my room and write you a cheque for the amount, whatever it may be. Afterwards I will have a talk with Major Bristow. Nonsense, child, don't cry! The money is nothing to me, and I always promised your uncle that I would look after ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... nothing for the consequence; and the poor soul, knowing that which I was still ignorant of, believed it, every word, and had her head nigh turned with vanity and gratitude. Now, of all this I had no guess; I was one of those most opposed to any nonsense about native women, having seen so many whites eaten up by their wives' relatives, and made fools of in the bargain; and I told myself I must make a stand at once, and bring her to her bearings. But she looked so quaint and pretty as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... attention, vol. i., p. 75, as an example of precision in flower-form, we may as well retain it in our list here. It will be therefore our twenty-first variety,—it is Loudon's fifty-ninth and last. He translates 'polita' simply 'polished,' which is nonsense. I can think of nothing to call it but 'dainty,' and will leave ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... the perils of the sea, and a landsman delivered himself of the customary nonsense about the poor mariner wandering in far oceans, tempest-tossed, pursued by dangers, every storm-blast and thunderbolt in the home skies moving the friends by snug firesides to compassion for that poor mariner, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was very careful; and he fully agreed with May's prejudices. Such things injured one's position in the neighbourhood. "Edith is a very foolish woman," he said severely. "And Grimmer is little more sensible. He was talking a great deal of nonsense about South African mines when we were coming down in the train this evening. Crossley and Merchant were in the carriage, and I am sure they were pleased when I took him up sharply. I do not know whether he is aware that I was interested in the promotion of the ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... father, handing him a towel. "But we can't have any more of this nonsense about getting up. This will happen every time you have to be called more than once. Dry yourself now, and ...
— The Goody-Naughty Book • Sarah Cory Rippey
... chorus of this favourite pastoral song, I choose rather to violate a rule in grammar, than a Scottish phrase so common, that when it is altered into the proper way, every shepherd and shepherd's sweetheart account it nonsense. I was once singing it at a wedding with great glee the latter way, "When the kye come hame," when a tailor, scratching his head, said, "It was a terrible affectit way that!" I stood corrected, and have ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... must leave off this nonsense, and attend to his Lordship's charge, which is now about to commence. I have not been able to get you a single good murder, although I have kept a sharp look-out, as you desired me; but there is a chance of a ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Now that you've left off 'speaking your mind,' as you used to call it, you're becoming quite docile and useful. Perhaps, I'll give Ripon another fifty dollars a year. I'm not a hard man, you know, when people understand that I stand no nonsense. But I always have my own way. No one can get over me. You and I understand each other, Mrs. Ripon, eh? Yet, I doubt if you'd have remained so long, if Ripon hadn't married you. He's made a sensible woman of you. Tell him I'm going to give him an extra fifty dollars a year, but—but ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... utter clearness in the presentation of his fable. Unless the reader of "The Brushwood Boy" and "They" has absolute faith that Mr. Kipling knows the truth of his themes, the stories are reduced to nonsense; for they present no evidence (through running parallel to actuality) which proves that the author does know the truth. Unless the reader has faith that Stevenson deeply understands the nature of remorse, the conversation between Markheim and his ghostly visitant becomes ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... the train, seeing people in everyday attire, commonplace occurrences going on about her, the spell of Professor Burr faded, and cold reason stared her in the face. Was it nonsense, this idea of transporting bodies through the air, in invisible waves? Yet, she was old-fashioned; the age of miracles had not passed for her. Radio, in which pictures and voices could be sent on wireless waves, was unexplainable ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... her hand away. "Good-bye, you fool-woman," she said impatiently, yet gently, too. "You talk such sense and such nonsense. Good-bye," she added brusquely, but yet she smiled at the woman as she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... along in a minute. What did I tell you?" exclaimed Bob as the troopers and their prisoners came into view over the top of the ridge. "Now, Peasley, if you don't behave yourself I'll take you to the fort under arrest. I am in the discharge of my duty, and I am not going to put up with any more nonsense." ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... Wisdom of Solomon Stuff and Nonsense Sacrifices of Cannibal Husbands Inclinations Mistaken for Affection Selfish Liking and Attachment Foolish ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... 'Stop that nonsense!' said the old man. 'I will not give you a horse. You can't speak; you don't know how to choose your words. Your brothers! Ah! ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... of your mind: though these Pats cry aloud, That they've got too much Church, tis all nonsense and stuff; For Church is like love, of which Figaro vowed, That even too much of ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... parodists and other small wits. In any social company, if Emerson's poetry was mentioned somebody was sure to raise a laugh; and there was nothing that could be done about it. It was hoped that Matthew Arnold's prestige would put a final end to this nonsense, which was nothing but a fashionable habit; but he added the weight of his position as professor of literature to the other side of the scale. He praised certain portions very highly, but averred that these were exceptional, and concluded with what seems to be a "reductio ad absurdum," ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... all mankind in general, and our lovers in particular, Charles's last letter was very unlike some that had preceded it; for instead of the usual "Oh, my love"'s, "sweet, sweet eyes," "darling"'s, and all manner of such chicken-hearted nonsense, it was positively sensible, rational, not to say utilitarian: though I must acknowledge that here and there it degenerates into the affectionate, or Stromboli-vein of letter-writing, at opening especially; and really now and then I shall take leave to indicate ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... be a brother to Florence Howard?" asked Mrs. Mumbles, in amaze. "You are talking nonsense ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... is alone sufficient to disgust me with variety, for I cannot form an idea of a greater torment than being obliged to speak continually without time for recollection. I know not whether it proceeds from my mortal hatred of all constraint; but if I am obliged to speak, I infallibly talk nonsense. What is still worse, instead of learning how to be silent when I have absolutely nothing to say, it is generally at such times that I have a violent inclination; and, endeavoring to pay my debt of conversation as speedily as possible, I hastily gabble a number of words without ideas, happy when ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... cups, when she was married," said Hepzibah to Phoebe. "She was a Davenport, of a good family. They were almost the first teacups ever seen in the colony; and if one of them were to be broken, my heart would break with it. But it is nonsense to speak so about a brittle teacup, when I remember what my heart has gone ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Bella, holding the right hand of the wounded soldier, while my mother looked on with tearful, and Ivanka with eager, eyes, "no, I will not be discarded. You must not presume, on the strength of your being weak, to talk nonsense. I hold you, sir, to your engagement, unless, indeed, you admit yourself to be a faithless man, and wish to cast me off. But you must not dispute with me in your present condition. I shall exercise the right of a wife by ordering you to hold your tongue unless you drop the subject. The doctor ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Probably dreams are all nonsense," she admitted. "Usually, I don't pay much attention to 'em. But when I dream of poor 'Little Frank,' away off ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Barbarian in her Caesar's place, So you, degenerate, share as hard a fate, And seat Pomposus where your Probus sate. Of narrow brain, yet of a narrower soul, [i] Pomposus holds you in his harsh controul; Pomposus, by no social virtue sway'd, With florid jargon, and with vain parade; With noisy nonsense, and new-fangled rules, (Such as were ne'er before enforc'd in schools.) [ii] Mistaking pedantry for learning's laws, He governs, sanction'd but by self-applause; With him the same dire fate, attending Rome, Ill-fated Ida! soon must stamp your doom: Like her o'erthrown, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... said our visitor complacently, "'Paulo majora canamus'; for after all he was but half delivered from his Jewish prejudices; and when he quitted nonsense of the Old Testament,—though in fact he never did thoroughly,—he evidently believed the fables of the New just as much as the pure truths which lie at the basis of 'spiritual' Christianity. We separate the dross of Christianity ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... 'phone.] How are you, my old friend?... How are your plum trees? [Listens.] Bad, eh? Well, we can only pray and use Bordeaux Mixture.... No.... Nonsense! This business has been in my family for seven generations. Why sell? I'll see that it stays in the family seven generations longer! [Echoing.] Do I propose to live that long? N—no; but my plans ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... remarks, assurances of loyalty and frank inquiries about the Master's health. His manner was breezy, his accent lacked the easy staccato of latter-day English. He made it admirably clear to Graham that he was a bluff "aerial dog"—he used that phrase—that there was no nonsense about him, that he was a thoroughly manly fellow and old-fashioned at that, that he didn't profess to know much, and that what he did not know was not worth knowing He made a manly bow, ostentatiously free ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... canoes, and ready to push off, that those on shore discovered them to be overladen, and recommended them to hire one of immense size, which was lying alongside. Without stopping to make them any reply, or listen to any further nonsense, they desired their own men to push the boats out into the middle of the current, which was done very promptly, and the town of Lever, with its chief and inhabitants, was speedily out of sight ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Nonsense! West went inside and walked the floor. The idea was preposterous. Still—he smiled—it was filled with amusing possibilities. Too bad he must put it forever away and settle down to ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... the youth, "it is time all this nonsense should cease; I am ready to go with you, ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... reasonable man should talk such nonsense. How can a ball of fire possibly descend into the water and not be extinguished? The sun is not a ball of fire at all, it is the Deity named Deva, who rides for ever in a chariot round the golden mountain, Meru. Sometimes the evil serpents Ragu and Ketu attack Deva and swallow ...
— What Men Live By and Other Tales • Leo Tolstoy
... "Chust nonsense. He vould dot I haf all his fortune, on kondition dot I sell nodings.—Den he cried! Boor mann! It made me ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... After all, was it right to let the old name die out for want of an heir? Was it just to his father? And Isabella would not expect to be made love to. There was never that sort of nonsense about her, and she would make all due allowance ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... may apply elsewhere, thinks the patient, but surely it is nonsense to teach that it applies in matters of health, for does not everybody know that most of our diseases are due to causes over which we have no control? That the chief cause is germs and that we can not control the air well enough to prevent one of these horrible monsters ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... her particular set. Now I can tell her that there's more beauty among those who don't give themselves half the airs, and who she looks down upon, than there is to be found among her 'fashionables.' But Emma is perfectly ridiculous with her 'exclusive' nonsense," he continued, with much feeling, evidently showing how deeply he resented his sister's reflections upon the style and stamp of his ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... step from the sublime to the ridiculous, which reminds me that if I remain here much longer talking nonsense I shall lose the good opinion I am sure you have formed of me from Mr. Mackenzie's letter. Why, it must be after eleven o'clock! Are you going any farther, or will you walk with me to ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... for this fellow from Arizona stabbed his vanity. It hurt his class pride and his personal self-esteem that she should take pleasure in the man's society. Bee never had been well broken to harness. He set his thin lips tight and resolved that he would stand no nonsense of this sort after they were married. If she wanted to flirt it would have to be with some ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... an ear, Camilla's charms to view, and accents hear![66] So while she varies the impassion'd song, Alternate motions on the bosom throng! 30 As heavenly Milton[67] guides her magic voice, And virtue thus convey'd allures the choice. Discard soft nonsense in a slavish tongue, The strain insipid, and the thought unknown; From truth and nature form the unerring test; 35 Be what is manly, chaste, and good the best! 'Tis not to ape the songsters of the groves, Through all the quiverings of their wanton loves; 'Tis not the enfeebled thrill, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... his estimate to twenty; and a little after, the calculation coming out with a deficit, cut it down again to five pounds ten, with the remark, "I told you it was nonsense. This sort of thing has to be done strictly, or where's ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... here, Mr. Jones, this is sheer nonsense. We get wind at Wakefield and water at Turner's Tank; now, what excuse is there for putting in a siding ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... of Trophonius; or as in some den, where that fiercest and savagest of all wild creatures, the TONGUE, that unruly member, has strangely lain tied up and captive. You have bathed with stillness.—O when the spirit is sore fretted, even tired to sickness of the janglings, and nonsense-noises of the world, what a balm and a solace it is, to go and seat yourself, for a quiet half hour, upon some undisputed corner of a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... home. You're bound to make money. I tell my granddaughter," with a triumphant nod to the lady in question, "to bank on brains and energy and American push. I tell her," with a profound wink to Katrina, "to let this old family nonsense and society racket go hang. I'm glad ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... in all the world was half so fleet as the marvelous horse Pegasus, who had wings as well as legs, and was even more active in the air than on the earth? To be sure, a great many people denied that there was any such horse with wings, and said that the stories about him were all poetry and nonsense. But, wonderful as it appeared, Bellerophon believed that Pegasus was a real steed, and hoped that he himself might be fortunate enough to find him; and once fairly mounted on his back, he would be able to fight the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of our colored regiments, and the more I converse with our soldiers, the more convinced I am that upon them we must ultimately rely as the principle source of our strength in these latitudes. It is perfect nonsense for any one to attempt to talk away the broad fact, evident as the sun at noonday, that these men are capable not only of making good soldiers, but the very best of soldiers. The Third Louisiana Native Guard, Colonel Nelson, ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... from Mongolia to China is much to be deplored. I think it would be wrong in me not to inform you of the true state of matters, and to remind you that it is little short of nonsense to speak of reopening the Mongolian Mission so long as there is only one man in the field. I am fully aware of the difficulty of finding suitable men, and most fully sympathise with you, but don't let us delude ourselves with the idea of Mongol Mission work progressing till another ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... found much to praise. Hanway often went to the root when he dealt with the evils of life. Thus he writes:—'The introducing new habits of life is the most substantial charity.' But he thus mingles sense and nonsense:—'Though tea and gin have spread their baneful influence over this island and his Majesty's other dominions, yet you may be well assured that the Governors of the Foundling Hospital will exert their utmost skill and vigilance to prevent the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... whether it behoved her to be angry with the old servant, and if so, how she was to show her anger. "You shouldn't talk such nonsense, Mrs Baggett." ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... this they would find that everything would go on all right, there would be more work and less poverty. Let the men do their best for their masters, and the masters do their best for their men, and they would find that that was the true solution of the social problem, and not the silly nonsense that was talked by people what went about with red flags. (Cheers and laughter.) Most of those fellows were chaps who was too lazy to work for their livin'. (Hear, hear.) They could take it from him that, if ever the Socialists got the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... in reality it is one of the worst pieces of work he ever did, almost as bad as "Titus Andronicus" or "Timon" or "The Taming of the Shrew." Unfortunately for the would-be judges, Coleridge did not guide their opinions of "Henry V."; he hardly mentioned the play, and so they all write the absurdest nonsense about it, praising because praise of Shakespeare has come to be the fashion, and also no doubt because his bad work is more on the level of their intelligence than ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... dis here 's nonsense. I jest knows it is, and dat's how I know Mas' Sam was outen his head when ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... to us of the first century of medical practice, in the hands of Winthrop and Oliver, is comparatively simple and reasonable. I suspect that the conditions of rude, stern life, in which the colonists found themselves in the wilderness, took the nonsense out of them, as the exigencies of a campaign did out of our physicians and surgeons in the late war. Good food and enough of it, pure air and water, cleanliness, good attendance, an anaesthetic, an opiate, a stimulant, quinine, and two or three common drugs, proved to be the marrow of medical treatment; ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... conversation had given him little pleasure. Folly was in the air, and Elinor Marshall, to his surprise, seemed in harmony with it. Heretofore he had known her as a thoughtful, serious-minded woman, with a leaning to melancholy; and this unexpected and evidently enjoyable flight—or plunge—into pure nonsense, caused him a distinct uneasiness. The girl was brightening up, even becoming merry; a state of mind that never leads ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... have everything that is given at the other parties, or wherefore do we live? And caterers and waiters rack their brains to devise new forms of expense and extravagance; and when the bill comes in, one is sure to feel that one is paying a great deal of money for a great deal of nonsense. It is, in fact, worse than nonsense, because our dear friends are in half the cases, not only no better, but a great deal worse, for what they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... his crisp beard from side to side. He felt that he had been far from proposing marriage to this large young woman's mother; something must have driven him to such a crazy action. Was it Caspar Dennett and his classic profile that had angered him into the confession? Nonsense! The conductor was a married man with a family. Despite her easy, unaffected manner, Margaret Fridolin was no fool; she ever observed the ultimate proprieties, and being dangerously unromantic would be the last ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... "A pretty man? Nonsense, Henshaw! A little weather-beaten, but a tight craft at that; she'll worship the ground you walk! Character, Henshaw, that's what these new American girls want to see in ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... first, an old choral melody ("Der, welcher wandelt diese Strasse"), the original being, "Christ, our Lord, to Jordan came," set to an accompaniment, strengthened by the trombones and other wind instruments; and the second, a nonsense duet ("Pa-pa-Papageno") for Papageno and Papagena, which would close the opera in a burst of childish hilarity but for the solemn concluding chorus of the priests ("Heil sei ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... "That's nonsense!" he exclaimed, when she had finished. "You're a lady —I know all about your family, I remember hearing about it when your father came here—it's as good as any in New England. What do you suppose I care, Janet? We love each other—I've got to have you. We'll be married in the spring, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... intimidate their neighbors; but Baron von Kelweingstein, let loose in his vice, was beaming; he cracked unsavory jokes, and with his crown of red hair, seemed to be on fire. He paid gallant compliments in his defective French of the Rhine, and his lewd nonsense, smacking of taverns, expectorated through the hole between his two broken teeth, reached the girls in the middle of a rapid fire ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... of Edward Lear's elusive nonsense, as full of the flavor of subtile humor as its original. It is for male chorus, with an accompaniment for two pianos, well individualized and erudite. It is in her solo songs, however, that her best ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... each other for ten days, and Norma, drinking in every expression of the firm mouth, the shrewd, kindly eyes, the finely set head, felt sudden confidence and happiness flood her being again. It was all nonsense, this imagining of hers, and she and Chris would always be the ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... might make a first-rate husband for a Russian girl. Your idea involves the notion of affinity, and if I know anything about affinities, they have to go chasing each other through the universe for cycle after cycle, in the hope of some day meeting—and it's all beastly nonsense. My affinity might be Delilah, and Samson's your beautiful self; but I'll tell you, on my own responsibility, that if I had caught Samson hanging about your father's house during my palmy days I'd have thrashed the life out of him, whether his hair was short or long, and don't you forget ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... first, held in the evening, but during the last years was a breakfast party, its character in other respects remaining the same. Little tables were spread under the dome, around the big telescope; the flowers were roses from Miss Mitchell's own garden. The "poems" were nonsense rhymes, in the writing of which Miss Mitchell was an adept. Each student would have a few verses of a more or less personal character, written by Miss Mitchell, and there were others written by the girls themselves; some were impromptu; others were ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... No matter. It is bed-time, children. Now to bed, and no more nonsense. I can't have it, I can't ...
— Mr. Kris Kringle - A Christmas Tale • S. Weir Mitchell
... indication is, that his early tastes were romantic literature and political economy,—a conjunction very common in France from the days of the "philosophers" to the present time. During our times of financial collapse, we have noticed, among the nonsense which he daily poured forth, some gleams of a superior understanding of the fundamental laws of finance. He appears to have understood 1837 and 1857 better than ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... this nonsense, I then simply related the story as it had occurred, and sent for the quarter-master, who was with me, and who confirmed all my statement. From that moment he was a mark of contempt in the ship. Every lie was a Murphy, and every Murphy a liar. He dared not resent this scorn of ours; ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... jannering nonsense has been talked about Bazaar by the Will-o'-the-Wisps who mislead the long-suffering public in turf matters. Bazaar is by Rector out of Church Mouse, and in his pedigree are to be found such well-known ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... to fulfil his promise, saying,—"that his, Captain Bird's, name was at stake; that if the parties were not removed, the whole city would say, that the King had bribed him, and bought off his promise." The King replied, "This is all nonsense; do you wish me to swear that Gholam Ruza is innocent, and that I never gave the promise you mention?" and, calling the minister, he placed his right hand on his head, and said,—"I swear, as if this was my son's head, and by God, that I believe Gholam ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... course, to select from the Compendium a charm or two, a few impossible etymologies and a few silly statements, to display these with a witty emphasis and to draw therefrom the easy conclusion that the book is a mass of crass superstition and absurd nonsense. This, however, is not criticism. It ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... is quite nonsense enough for one while!" said the Earl. "What news does this gentleman bring us from the ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... stood by, and fearing that we did not comprehend the language, she made a remark to that effect, to which he answered impatiently, 'Nonsense! don't you see they are in tears?' This was unanswerable; we were allowed to hear the poem to the end, and I certainly never listened to anything more feelingly and ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... to say that a little shock went through the neighbourhood when it was known that Calvin was dead, so marked was his individuality; and his friends, one after another, came in to see him. There was no sentimental nonsense about his obsequies; it was felt that any parade would have been distasteful to him. John, who acted as undertaker, prepared a candle-box for him, and I believe assumed a professional decorum; but there may have been the usual levity underneath, for I heard that he remarked in the kitchen ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... Of course I had to tell the Bank to refuse restitution. But do you think Psi is a sickness, like narcotic addiction? Nonsense. Telepathy is no more sickness than the ability to discriminate colors, or hear the tones of a scale. This is equivalent to the color-blind and tone-deaf asking that the rest of us stop perceiving color or hearing ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett
... snapped; "and I wish you wouldn't talk such a parcel of nonsense. A grown man and a member of a serious profession, too! ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... will.—But then, another will remonstrate, it does away with the freedom of the will. Well, here is a slippery subject sure enough, and one upon which more nonsense has been talked probably than any other within the range of philosophical or theological discussion. Have I anything new to say about it? Probably not, but I think I can focus the issue and show what we must recognise in order to have a rational grasp of the subject. Thinkers ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... be thankful and glad to have silk stockings. Nonsense, your legs are warm enough. I don't believe you. Now, Richard, how perfectly ridiculous! There is no left or right to stockings. You have no time to change. Shoes are a different thing. Well, hurry up, then. Because they are made so, I suppose. I ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... machine to go by perpetual motion is perpetual nonsense. Multitudes of boys and men have wasted much valuable time in trying to find it, but they never can, as it is contrary to natural laws, and therefore impossible; but one certainty of the future is, that a million ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... and talked to him as he had never talked before. "Your opposition is all nonsense," said Mark. "Young Pennington is in every way worthy of her. I have taken ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... rough hand on Madelon's shoulder. "Now you look at here, gal," said he. "I've had about all this darned nonsense I'm a-goin' to stan'. That chap is in jail for murder, an' in jail he's a-goin' to stay till I git orders from somebody besides you to let him out. An' what's more, don't you come here on no sich tom-fool arrant agin. ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... must not tell what Aunt Sadie says. It is just as sure to be nonsense as it is that you are ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... will trample all your work to pieces;" the ants answered "Why do you talk like this; do not despise us because we are small; perhaps we are better than you in some ways;" The elephant said "Do not talk nonsense: there is nothing at which you could beat me; I am in all ways the largest and most powerful animal on the face of the earth." Then the ants said "Well, let us run a race and see who will win, unless you win we will not admit that you are supreme." At this ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... such nonsense but Polly rather favored such an ending, so her mother and father quickly interrupted ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... what you mean," she said, smiling. "But it's nonsense. Besides, look at yourself and Amy! She hates him, and ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... has suffered unduly from the depreciation of Pope and Johnson. "I could not bear such nonsense," said Johnson of one of Cibber's odes, "and I would not let him read it to the end." Fielding attacked Cibber's style and language more than once in Joseph Andrews and elsewhere. Nevertheless, Cibber possessed wit, unusual good sense and tact; and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... the first I me of this verse is vicious. The Bombay reading kinchidanapadi (for Kasyanchidpadi) is the correct one. The commentator explains that this has reference to alms, loans, and taxes. Both the Bengal translators have made nonsense of this and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... look and say such cruel—Can you be unmoved while you see your Sophy in this dreadful condition? Can the best of fathers break my heart? Will he kill me by the most painful, cruel, lingering death?"—"Pooh! pooh!" cries the squire; "all stuff and nonsense; all maidenish tricks. Kill you, indeed! Will marriage kill you?"—"Oh! sir," answered Sophia, "such a marriage is worse than death. He is not even indifferent; I hate and detest him."—"If you detest un never so much," cries Western, "you shall ha'un." This ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... "Stuff and nonsense!" mused Miss Terry scornfully. "What is our Christmas, anyway? A time for shopkeepers to sell and for foolish folks to kill themselves in buying. Christmas spirit? No! It is all humbug,—all selfishness, and worry; an unwholesome season of unnatural activities. I am glad I am out of it. I ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... troubled with various sects of enthusiasts who agree in nothing except a frenzy of pious zeal and a most uncharitable spirit towards their unconverted neighbors, and a madness to introduce confusion, anarchy and nonsense into all the exercises of religion. * * He that is master of the strongest pair of lungs, and is able to exhibit the loudest and most doleful vociferation, is sure of prevailing success. Those who perceive themselves deficient in point of noise endeavour to secure renown by the advancement ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... us imply, which is worse. Girls are just the same along the main lines of sentiment and hope and trust and belief in men now as they ever were, and most of this talk about the new woman being different is mere stuff and nonsense. ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... had so won the affections of the poor and the lower orders, that they were strangely desirous of living under his rule. Many even besought him to put down the malignity of his personal enemies, sweep away laws, decrees, and other pernicious nonsense, and carry on the government without fear of ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... consul will settle matters, but if not I'm very certain that Mr Murray will stand no nonsense," ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... story, not because he intended to read it, but in payment for his hour of disillusionment. Then he slung his pack over his shoulders and tramped out into the country. He laughed aloud at the thought of Helen and her idolaters. A poetic hoax. Overripe words. Seductive sounds. Nonsense! ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... with admiring eyes as the two ate and drank, and talked and laughed. Thus far in his life Tode had been, without being aware of it, a believer in "blood descent," distinct spheres in life, and all that sort of nonsense. He was a boy to be sure, but it had never so much as occurred to him that he could be even remotely connected with such specimens of boyhood as were before him now. Not that they were any better than ...
— Three People • Pansy
... known it all the time? But that, Frances said to herself, was nonsense. If she had known as much as all that, why should she have suffered so horribly that she had nearly died of it? Unless—supposing—it had been his suffering that she had nearly ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... as it is," said the farmer. "It was one of the first buildin's on the farm, and Uncle Isaac used to be terrible fond of stayin' out here. In fact before he died he spent a lot of time out here after th' accident, sittin' all by himself, and sometimes talking a lot of nonsense. His mind was goin' then, I reckon, only none of us knowed it. Yes, poor Uncle Isaac was terrible fond of this old barn, and I sure will hate to see it ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... exclaimed the usher, joyously, chuckling with the idea of exhibiting so triumphantly his prowess before the blooming widow. The ground was duly stepped, and the goal fixed, whilst my antagonist, all animation and spirits, was pouring his liquid nonsense into the lady's ear. I took care that, in about the middle of the distance, our race-ground should pass over where some rushes were growing. Now Riprapton had a most uncommon speed in this manner of progressing. He would, with his ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Dennis, nonsense, nonsense! He has a great many social engagements of the most desirable kind. He is, I believe, ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... which these Rules prescrib'd to me, unless it is in the Chapter concerning Superstition. And even here, unless the Commentary had been somewhat copious, the Text it self wou'd have appear'd like a motly Piece of mysterious Nonsense. Thus much I thought my self oblig'd to do in Justice to Theophrastus; and as for the Enlargements which I have made, over and above what wou'd have satisfy'd this Demand, they will not, 'tis hop'd, be unacceptable to the curious Reader. ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... 'all malefactors should be kept for experiments instead of being hanged.' In another number this periodical indulges in a criticism upon the new ode of the poet laureate (Colley Cibber), in the course of which the writer expresses an opinion that 'when a song is good sense, it must be made nonsense before it is made music; so when a song is nonsense, there is no other way but by singing it to make it seem tolerable sense'—a criticism which, whether it were true of that period or no, may be fairly said to apply with great force to the times ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... helper of some great reformer who said: 'I will give you all sorts of material support; but I have not a grain of sympathy with the cause to which you have devoted your life. I think it is madness and nonsense: I will feed you and house you and make you comfortable, but I do not care one rush for the object for which you are to be housed and fed and made comfortable.' Jesus Christ let these poor women help Him that He might live to bear ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... girl!" repeated the sister, sarcastically. "Do you mean to tell me that you believe these wretched Indians don't want him to marry you? You, a Bestman, and an English girl? Nonsense, Lydia! You are talking utter nonsense." But the sister's voice ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... distant, felt all the pains and torments in good earnest, which were inflicted in show upon these images: and such a horror I had of these wicked witches, that though I am now better instructed, and look upon all these stories as mere idle tales, and invented to fill people's heads with nonsense, yet I cannot recall to mind the horrors which I then felt, without shuddering and feeling something of ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... generous and affecting things that ever dropt from the honey-flowing mouth of love. All I have not time to repeat: some I will. And oh! indulge your foolish daughter, who troubles you with her weak nonsense; because what she has to say, is so affecting to her; and because, if she went to bed, instead of ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... my dear," cried old Hannah; "it's all his nonsense. Just see what you've done, Tummus, with ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... intervals of my narrative Miss Belcher insisted on my swallowing great spoonfuls of hot bread-and-milk, against which—faint though I was and famished—my gorge rose. Also the ordeal of gulping it under four pairs of eyes was not a light one. But Miss Belcher insisted, and Miss Belcher stood no nonsense. ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... where did she come from? I never saw her before. I wonder if Mrs. Russell knows her, or Clara, or anybody! I will know where she lives, or where she is going at least,—that will be some clew! There! she is stopping that stage. I'll help her in! no, I won't,—she will think I am chasing her. Nonsense! do you suppose she saw you at the window? Of course! No, she didn't; don't be a fool! There! I'll get into the next stage. Now I'll keep watch of that, and she'll not know. So—all right! Go ahead, driver." And happy with some new happiness, eager, bright, the handsome young fellow sat watching ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... renounce that vile habit of punning?" said De Courcy with an earnestness of adjuration that excited a general laugh at his end of the table— "Come, Villiers, never mind his nonsense, for your premises, although a little long, are not without deep interest—but what has all this to do with our good ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... refutation of an opponent, but have your own answer; for there is many a one who can ask and cannot answer. And now I will not have you say that justice is duty or advantage or profit or gain or interest, for this sort of nonsense will not do for me; I ...
— The Republic • Plato
... mean, as I was just going to scold him; but he knows the advantage of getting the first word. He says, Why were we half an hour late? and how could he meet us there at four if at that time we had not left home? But that's nonsense. Chiltern has naturally a great flow of words, which he has cultivated by close attendance upon his Parliamentary duties. But he is mistaken if he thinks I am a Resolution and am to be ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... said Lord Lufton, "excuse me if I say that that's nonsense. What do we do when a poor man has come to think that another man's property is his own? We send him to prison ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... you sing. Does this keep out all but sacred music? I should not think that. But it does forbid singing you know not what in a foreign tongue, or mere dead nonsense in your own. I cannot see, for my part, why it is much better to sing "idle words" than to say them. How vapid, how senseless, is many a song one hears from a pretty mouth and a sweet voice. And ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner
... merrily. She was no prude, and made no pretense of being one. She enjoyed most of the nonsense that girls between fifteen and eighteen years of age usually enjoy. The strange young men, Tom Jennings and Roland Scott, whom the White boys had taken to the woods on the "evergreen hunt," called that very morning—came to make their ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... have only repeated what we knew before. The language you have allowed yourself to use in my absence is the same language which your pupil was foolish enough to employ when she wrote for the second time to my late master. How can a lady of your years and experience seriously repeat such nonsense? This girl boasts and threatens. She will do this; she will do that. You have her confidence, ma'am. Tell me, if you please, in plain words, what ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... fiddling, busy, yet, to borrow a word from you, unbusy man: has a great deal to do, and seems to me to dispatch nothing. Irresolute and changeable in every thing, but in teasing me with his nonsense; which yet, it is evident, he must continue upon my mother's interest more than upon his own hopes; for ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... fast our faith in the divine government of the world in the midst of so much that was past understanding. But we lost sight of the metaphysical truth, that, though men may fail to convince others by a never so incessant repetition of sonorous nonsense, they nevertheless gradually persuade themselves, and impregnate their own minds and characters with a belief in fallacies that have been uncontradicted only because not worth contradiction. Thus our Southern politicians, by dint of continued reiteration, have persuaded themselves to accept ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... ventured to confide to Hubbard his wild dream of sending speech over an electric wire, but Hubbard laughed him to scorn. "Now you are talking nonsense," he said. "Such a thing never could be more than a scientific toy. You had better throw that idea out of your mind and go ahead with your musical telegraph, which if it is successful will make you ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... instances, when the minister has stated the necessity of a Court dress, they have remonstrated, thinking it an expense wholly unnecessary. "They were American citizens, and would be introduced as such; they had nothing to do with Court dresses, and all that nonsense." And thus, since the steam-vessels have increased the communication between the two countries, has the American minister been in a state of annoyance, to which it is impossible that he, or any other who may be appointed in his place, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... little. She's some speedy kid! We used to play together, you know, and our folks sorta fixed it up we were just made for each other and all that sorta thing, you know—but I don't know—I'm not going to be bound by any such nonsense, of course, unless I like. One doesn't want one's wife to be such an awfully good shot, fer ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... are all nonsense," she wrote; "the young lady's far too good for you, mauvais sujet beyond redemption. If you've a particle of conscience you'll not come and disturb the repose of an angel ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... from over the counter. "Chut! nonsense, man! The like of it was going before St. ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... 'Stuff—nonsense. I tell you that you are all crazy. You don't think what you are about. Wait till you are turned out of doors, bag and baggage, then see how you will feel—but then it will be ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 'Nonsense!' replied her sister. 'Why shouldn't Mr Cheggs be jealous if he likes? I like that, certainly. Mr Cheggs has a good a right to be jealous as anyone else has, and perhaps he may have a better right soon if he hasn't already. You know best about ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... and since Harold had been looking about, Mr. Bullock had advised him not to give in, for it would be sure to end in the raising of his rent, and young gentlemen had new-fangled notions that only led to expense and nonsense, and it was safest in the long run to ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thought Christine said, decidedly: "All that nonsense about the Baroness Ludolph is past forever—burned up in the fire with many things of more value. I have been fed too long on the husks of human greatness and ambition to want any more of them. They never did satisfy me, and in the ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... to myself, Ida, Countess Hahn-Hahn, had visited Sweden, and the fruit of her journey was, as is infallible with that lady, a book. When I arrived at Stockholm, people were just reading it, and I found them highly indignant at the nonsense and misrepresentations it contains. When a German goes to Sweden he is received as a brother, with a warmth and heartiness which should make a doubly pleasing impression, if we reflect how important it is in our days to preserve a mutual confidence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... "Wife is out; cook is new, and dinner will be a little late. Be patient." But at eight o'clock there was still no dinner. Riley began to grow suspicious and slipped down-stairs. He found no one in the kitchen and the range cold. He came back and reported. "Nonsense," said Field. "It can't be." All went down-stairs to find out the truth. "Let's get supper ourselves," suggested Russell. Then it was discovered that not a morsel of food was to be found in the refrigerator, closet, or cellar. "That's a joke on us," said ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... If our debates are to be kept wholesome, they cannot be too irreverent or too critical. And the irreverence, which has become traditional with us, comes down from those early days when we often talked such nonsense that we could not ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... her voice, "isn't it odd, but I hate sleeping alone here? I can't make it out quite; I've never felt such a thing before in my life. Do you—think it's all nonsense?" ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... her shapely, well-shod foot petulantly. "Rubbish!" she exclaimed. "You don't suppose I believe that nonsense, ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... softening emotion came over Razumov—made his knees shake a little. He repressed it with a new-born austerity. All that sentiment was pernicious nonsense. He couldn't be quick enough; and when he got into a sledge he shouted to the driver—"to the K—- Palace. Get on—you! Fly!" The startled moujik, bearded up to the very whites of his ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... significant phrases and motions of the head, taking everything to himself as was his custom. How could any one suppose that his child, a Chebe, the daughter of an honorable business man known for thirty years on the street, was capable of Nonsense! ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... "No, nonsense! I wouldn't give a fip for all your politics, generally, but I think this is something downright cruel and unchristian. I hope, my dear, no such law has ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... his shiny hat an' boots, an' fine clo'es, an' gold pin, an' thought of my ragged ole shirt, an' cotton pants, an' ole chip hat with the brim most gone, an' my tin pail an' all. 'I ain't fit to,' I says, ready to cry—an'—wa'al, he jest laughed, an' says, 'Nonsense,' he says, 'come along. A man needn't be ashamed of his workin' clo'es,' he says, an' I'm dum'd if he didn't take holt of my hand, an' in ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... not nonsense, senorita, begging your pardon," protested Juan earnestly. "And Ferdinand and Pablo and Sebastian, they ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... toys and—and all that sort of thing were nonsense, but—but I used to so hate empty rooms myself when I was little." She pointed to the gallery. "And the passages all empty. ... And how could I ever bear ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... pay as much as ten pounds to another person to keep it for him? What I had said to Maisie about Mr. Gilverthwaite having so much money that ten pounds was no more to him than ten pence to me was, of course, all nonsense, said just to quieten her fears and suspicions—I knew well enough, having seen a bit of the world in a solicitor's office for the past six years, that even millionaires don't throw their money about ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... Virginia Beverly and the convict Max Dalahaide from coming together. Then, with the thought that they might meet seething in his head, he would stop abruptly and say to himself, as he had said so often before: "Nonsense; you are a fool. They cannot come together. There is everything against it." Still, the root of fear was there, and grew again ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... do nothing. People who have only common sense are at a terrible disadvantage when it comes to argument. I know it is all nonsense; but a great many people seem to prefer nonsense. I believe my father would die if he ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... no such nonsense, sir,' said the Baron, in a tone which rendered Macwheeble mute, 'but proceed as we accorded before dinner, if it be your wish to ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... Life he wrote—"Foote having brought them on the stage for sitting in council, as they had done on Whittington and his Cat, I was not sorry to find them so ridiculous, or to mark their being so, and upon that nonsense, and the laughter that accompanied it, I struck my name ...
— The History of Sir Richard Whittington • T. H.
... imitations of real screams. That would be to step beyond the boundaries of art; for neither real screams nor their imitations are beautiful, and—if a truism may be pardoned to complete a nice sentence—without beauty there can be no art. In spite of much nonsense that has been written and talked, Wagner never sacrificed beauty. Those foolish tales which I used to read in my youth—of how Wagner appropriately, if daringly, sustained discords through long discordant situations—what are ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... cherished 'union' indefinitely; but, on the contrary, they greeted his triumph with enormous enthusiasm. Their feeling was explained by the comment of an innkeeper. 'Venezelos!' he said: 'Why, he is a man who can say "No". He won't stand any nonsense. If you try to get round him, he'll put you in irons.' And clearly he had hit the mark. Venezelos would in any case have done well, because he is a clever man with an excellent power of judgement; but acuteness is a common Greek virtue, and if he has done brilliantly, it is because he has the added ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... had been much more fun when he lived by his wits. Sometimes, now, when he tried to talk of politics, or assert himself on some question of public interest, she was startled by his limitations. Formerly, when he was not sure of his ground, it had been his way to turn the difficulty by glib nonsense or easy irony; now he was actually dull, at times almost pompous. She noticed too, for the first time, that he did not always hear clearly when several people were talking at once, or when he was at the theatre; ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... character, tender of heart and frail as to body in the way Pierre was, he experiences a disgust and horror which he does not dare confide to others for all these brutalities, these nastinesses, all this nonsense of fruitful and devouring nature—this breeding sow that gobbles ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... "Pooh! nonsense! he's mad," replied the old seaman. "Never mind him; come, Mynheer Vanderdecken, we will obey you; but the helm must ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... fist on the table so that everything jumped—the inn-keeper included. "I'm done with being treated like dirt—do you understand! I'm just as good as you and all the rest of them. And if I hear any more nonsense, then to hell ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... come back to-night, and I'm just as glad. It's all nonsense your staying the night whenever you go up to see ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... upon him that hallowed his seamed features and she could not speak. But when she got herself in hand she said calmly: "But, Grant—that's stuff and nonsense—there is no revolution. There can be no Democracy of labor, so long as labor is what it is. We all want to help labor—we know that it needs help. But there can be no Democracy of labor until labor finds itself; until it gets capacity ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... no valley, only a poem?' How very peculiar! Dear, dear! she thought; I hope all this isn't turning his brain; it seemed so like nonsense what he said. 'You look so pale, my dear, and so distraught,' she went on; 'I ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... and taking his head between his hands, he assumed the grave attitude of a man who is having relations with the Muses. After a few minutes of this sacred intercourse, he had produced one of those strings of nonsense-verses which the libretti-makers call, not without reason, monsters, and which they improvise very readily as a ground-work for the composer's inspiration. Only Schaunard's were no nonsense-verses, but very good sense, expressing with sufficient clearness the inquietude awakened in his mind ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... Long Hall, of course," cut in Rupert, as usual ignoring their nonsense. "And the old summer drawing-room. But we can shut up the dining-room and the ball-room. We'll eat in the kitchen, and that and ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... he grows real chatty. Seems this is a brand-new machine, just delivered the night before, and he's keepin' it a dead secret from the fam'ly, so Mother won't worry. He says that's all nonsense, though; for he's been takin' lessons on the quiet for more than a year, has earned his pilot's license, and can handle any ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... listen to these people, if they imagine even that he can act upon their advice, all is lost. There will be civil war. The people have thought, during the last twenty-five years. They know their rights, and they know that one man is as good as another, and that all their 'noble races' are nonsense. Each one will keep his property, each one will have equal rights and will defend himself to the death." That is what Father Goulden said to me, and as my permit never came, I thought the minister ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... had spoken to the princess; "likewise stuff and nonsense and the equivalent thereof ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... was being carried off her feet on the top of a rapturous flood, "what nonsense! You were as innocent as I was. What would it matter if you were arrested ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... the end they will oust the Mongol from the best lands as sure as fate, unless Russia first ousts them, as apparently she is doing. I am sorry for the Mongol; he is a happy-go-lucky, likeable fellow, but it is all nonsense for the Russian Government to talk about the way the Chinese settlers are wronging him, taking away the tillable lands. He does not want them to till, but to pasture his herds, and that is just the difficulty. It is not China but civilization that is driving the Mongol ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... above all, of those women with their disheveled hair, their flashing eyes and their wolfish teeth, who, in the solitude and silence of the studio, actually terrified her. Renovales laughed. What nonsense! Jealous little girl! As if he were capable of thinking of anything but art with ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... quarter of an hour before the train started, Nance resolutely kept the situation in hand, not giving Mac a chance to speak to her alone, and keeping up a running fire of nonsense that provoked even Mr. Clarke to laughter. When the "All Aboard!" sounded from without, there was scant time for good-bys. She hurried out, and when on the platform, turned eagerly to scan the windows above her. A gust of smoke swept between her and the slow-moving ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... gentleman, though he has come down in the world; for, as he says, 'misery makes a man acquainted with strange bedfellows, and takes the nonsense out of him.' I think so too, and if ever I get better, I don't mean to go about the country speaking against born gentlefolks any more. They're much of a muchness with ourselves—bad and good; a little of all sorts; the same flesh and blood as ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... as usual. Yep, in a new Archer Seven, you could undo a few clamps, pull a foot up out of a boot, and actually change your socks... Inconsequential nonsense like that. He ended by telling her not to worry about any knicknacks he might send—that they came easy, out here. He microposted the letter, and mailed a square of ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... scandal was disturbing a certain Valley not a hundred miles from the Rim Rocks, the essential details of which could not be given, would probably never be printed, for obvious reasons. Then followed a solid paragraph of nonsense verse inserted as prose; about a Ranger-man, Ranger-man, running away, 'Cause pa-pah, dear pa-pah comes home for to-day; But his Lincoln green coatie the Ranger forgot; And pa-pah, dear pa-pah came home raging hot; The Ranger-man, ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... by Mr Benson, but he once or twice interposed with a plea for those who might differ; and then he was heard by Mr Bradshaw with a kind of evident and indulgent pity, such as one feels for a child who unwittingly talks nonsense. By-and-by, Mrs Bradshaw and Miss Benson fell into one tete a tete, and Ruth and Jemima into another. Two well-behaved but unnaturally quiet children were sent to bed early in the evening, in an authoritative voice, by their father, because one of ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Mrs. Rindge; "he's been standing in the door of my sitting-room for a whole half-hour talking nonsense." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... civil and religious liberty over the world, is little other than sad temporary jargon, brought upon us by a stern necessity,—but now ordered by a sterner to take itself away again a little. Sad temporary jargon, I say: made up of sense and nonsense,—sense in small quantities, and nonsense in very large;—and, if taken for the whole or permanent truth of human things, it is no better than fatal infinite nonsense eternally untrue. All men, I think, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... prophets to deceive the people. He treated those who still have any regard for the prophecies of the New Testament as enthusiasts and simpletons; called all the predictions respecting the person of the Messiah, nonsense; accused the prophets of being cunning deceivers; and said that the belief of those prophets has preserved incredulity on ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... witty, do not talk nonsense over-much. Remember that it is the "little nonsense now and then" that is "relished by the best of men." It is perilously easy to weary people with the "smart" style of talk. But let your cheerful sense, grave or gay, be as good an offering to your friends as you know how to make. ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... "Everything that girl does you think is perfect. Instead of encouraging her in her meanness you ought to help me out." His tones harshened, and he lost the fine edge of his self-control. "I've stood enough nonsense from that little—" ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... Sabine would never really have been happy together," she now told him. "You were much too subservient to her and let her order you about. She would have grown into a bully. Now, Mr. Arranstoun won't stand a scrap of nonsense, I am sure; he would make any woman obey him—if necessary by using brute force! They are perfectly suited to one another, and very soon you will realize it and won't care. Do you remember how we talked at dinner that night at Ebbsworth about women having to go through a stage in their lives sooner ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... Inna, give and take; it's that as smooths life's rough places. Master Oscar has nothing to give his uncle for all he's doing for him, but his will—letting go that foolish nonsense about the sea. He ought to give up the sea and take to the farm—that would be his giving and taking; and his uncle would give him the farm, and take his—his obedience to his wishes, as a sort of harvest of love after all the ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... "That's d—— nonsense," said the Earl. Miss Cassewary gave a start,—not, we may presume, because she was shocked, for she could not be much shocked, having heard the same word from the same lips very often; but she thought ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... flushed and resolute. "Nonsense! It's too late for that sort of thing. We've no right to lie to other people or to ourselves. We won't talk of your marriage; but do you see me marrying May ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... American, though he did not hesitate to say also that he considered his heir a fool to think of marrying a woman without fortune, when he might so easily do better. In conclusion, he said that if this infatuated nonsense, as he called it, went on, he would withdraw his allowance from the very day of the marriage. He ended by hoping that Horace would come to his senses, and let him know that the thing was ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... and all the thanks we get is to be told we're Philistines and vulgar tradesmen and sordid city men and so forth, and that theyre all angels of light and leading. The time has come to assert ourselves and put a stop to their stuck-up nonsense. Perhaps if we had nothing better to do than talking or writing, we could do it better than they. Anyhow, theyre the failures and refuse of business (hardly a man of them that didnt begin in an office) and we're the successes ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... short cut to the abolition of metaphysics. The word 'metaphysics,' says Tooke,[150] is nonsense. All metaphysical controversies are 'founded on the grossest ignorance of words and the nature of speech.' The greatest part of his second volume is concerned with etymologies intended to prove that an 'abstract idea' ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... "Design! Nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... it not,' rejoined the Prefect. 'Most who rise to any intelligence, must renounce, if they ever harbored it, all faith in the absurdities and nonsense of the Roman religion. But what then? These very absurdities, as we deem them, are holy truth to the multitude, and do more than all bolts, bars, axes, and gibbets, to keep them in subjection. The intelligent are good citizens by reflection; the multitude, through instincts of birth, and the power ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... spoken of the part played by the physical disadvantages of poverty in causing the nervousness of the housewife. It is not alleged or affirmed that all poor housewives suffer from the neurosis,—that would be nonsense. But poor food, poor housing, poor clothing, the lack of vacations, the insufficient convalescence from illness and childbirth are not blessings nor do they have anything but a bad effect, an effect traceable in the conditions ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... seven-and-thirty), she was always talking pretentious nonsense, and always worrying the unfortunate men with every small exaction which a vain and foolish woman can impose on long-suffering male humanity. As Madame Fosco (aged three-and-forty), she sits for hours together without saying a word, frozen up in the strangest manner in herself. The hideously ridiculous ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... think it would be the true compensation if all the rubbish of the old cloister were cleared from the area of those walls, and a great garden planted in the space, where lovers might whisper their wise nonsense, and children might romp and frolic, till the crumbling, masonry forgot its old office of imprisonment and the memory of its prisoners. For here, one could only think of the moping and mumming herd of monks, who were certainly not worth remembering, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... the country gets nothing, the towns but little. What are they to do? Bring suits? A million of creditors bring a million of suits against John Nokes and Robert Styles, wheresoever to be found? All nonsense. The loss is total. And a sum is thus swindled from our citizens, of seven times the amount of the real debt, and four times that of the factitious one of the United States, at the close of the war. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... cut upper lip, which she said were sure marks of high blood, and never found in the lower ranks! With a scornful expression on her face, old Hagar would listen to these remarks, and then, when sure that no one heard her, she would mutter: "Marks of blood! What nonsense! I'm almost glad I've solved the riddle, and know 'taint blood that makes the difference. Just tell her the truth once, and she'd quickly change her mind. Hester's blue, pinched nose, which makes one think of fits, would be the very essence of aristocracy, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... diamonds, and settlements, and all the vanities for which your worldly woman sells her soul. It is a great wonder that, with such an example before her eyes, Miss Selby is not as bad herself; but she is a wonderfully sensible girl, and never talks that sort of nonsense; why, she goes to early service, and looks after some poor people: not that she ever mentions these facts, for she is not ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... written for no reason on earth and with no earthly reason. It just simply happened, on the principle, I suppose that "murder will out." Murder is a bad thing and so are nonsense rhymes. There is often a valid excuse for murder; there is none for nonsense rhymes. They seem to be a necessary evil to be classed with smallpox, chicken-pox, yellow fever and other irruptive diseases. ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... except it be Celestial; but she speaks of the Passion of one Mortal to another with too much Bitterness, for one that had no Jealousy mixed with her Contempt of it. If at any time she sees a Man warm in his Addresses to his Mistress, she will lift up her Eyes to Heaven, and cry, What Nonsense is that Fool talking? Will the Bell never ring for Prayers? We have an eminent Lady of this Stamp in our Country, who pretends to Amusements very much above the rest of her Sex. She never carries a white Shock-dog with ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... scrimped to pay his expenses for nonsense clubs and societies by asking you to do it another four years. You're getting your thanks now. College! Well, not if the court ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... which they came into existence, are all inventions of men who exercised all their ingenuity over the problem, and inferred that such things must actually be the case. As for the Indian account, it is nonsense fit only to deceive women and children, and I do not think it worthy of reflection. The Chinese theories, on the other hand, are based upon profound philosophical speculations and sound extremely plausible, but what they call the absolute and the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... you said, Fraeulein? How do I remember! Stuff and nonsense mostly! You were crazy with fever, and your eyes used to shine so, it made me afraid. Then the Kapellmeister would come and put you to sleep with his eyes.—Let go of my hands, Fraeulein, you are crushing the wool! Is it the ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... best give over talking nonsense, or by the Lord I'll take you off and put you to bed this instant! And, what's more, I'll ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in her arms. She carried him to bed and sang him a nonsense song. By and by Snubby Nose fell asleep. Susan went back downstairs and found Grandpa Grumbles ...
— Snubby Nose and Tippy Toes • Laura Rountree Smith
... be at Roaring Water before nightfall," cried the lieutenant. "Keep together, and do not pull rein until I give the order. Remember that I will stand no nonsense; and the first of you who plays any trick, I will shoot him through ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... Gibbon asks us to remember gratefully 'that the mischances of time and accident have spared the classic works to which the suffrage of antiquity had adjudged the first place of genius and glory,' I submit with all respect that he talks nonsense. Like the stranger in the temple of the sea-god, invited to admire the many votive garments of those preserved out of shipwreck, I ask 'at ubi sunt vestimenta eorum qui post vota nuncupata perierunt?'— or in other words 'Where are ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... complete subordination of national to party interests.' The complete subordination. I use the adjective advisedly. Party interests are not only the first thought of politicians in England, but, too often, the last and only thought." All this is sheer nonsense. The coincidence of party aims with the real interests of the people which the British Parliament has displayed since the Reform Act of 1832 has never been even remotely approached by any other country. Two causes have contributed ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... "Don't talk nonsense, Richard Arnold. The tone in which those last words were said shows me that you have not duly laid to heart what I said last night. There is no such thing as private property in the Brotherhood, of which I hope, by this time to-morrow, you ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... man's bearing won his heart—a certain impetuous simplicity and frankness which made him long to be of service to a nature unlike his own. Osgood found Peter genial, shrewd, and sad. Such a man he had never met. It seemed to him that Peter could set him straight in his own estimation; there was no nonsense about the old man, and yet he could see deep feeling in his dark, cavernous eyes. The feeling which had oppressed him passed away, and another took its place which contained restoration, and faith in the future. He got into Peter's way by attempting to help fodder the cattle ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... fellow. I would have done a hundred times as much. But don't talk blooming nonsense about leaving London. Many an innocent man falls under suspicion—there is not a shadow of disgrace attached to it. Stay here and work! Go back to your studio! And marry the woman you love. Why shouldn't you, now that you are free in every sense? I'll bet anything you like that she ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... my shield's low? How could it be?" ... If he checks the tag I'll be fired for sure. It's a lot of nonsense anyway. The enemy is everywhere, they keep telling us. Whoever saw one of them? "No, honest, I didn't notice anything. Can I help it if.... It's ...
— The Very Secret Agent • Mari Wolf
... throngs who composed the society of the Butte. Time and again I have seen heavy army trucks lumbering down the avenue, bearing in huge chalk letters on either side of the awning-covered sides, such inscriptions as—Bon jour, Montmartre. A bientot la Cigale—Greetings from the Front—and like nonsense, denoting not only a homesick heart, but a delicate attention towards a ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... all fashion, routine, tradition. The student mind doesn't begin to look into things for itself till about the senior year, and then it's full of what lies ahead, in the great world outside—poor innocents! With those of us who had anything in us, it took most of the time to knock the nonsense out.—And then if a man wants a chair, he must take it in a western concern, where he'll be expected to lead in prayer-meeting, and to have no views of geology that conflict with ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... beauty," he says it as if he were reproaching Ibsen. His whole influence is thrown on to the side of an austere common sense which destroys emotion because it may become fanaticism, which laughs at sentiment because it may be perverted into nonsense, which is as Puritanically cruel to the insidious blandishments of romance as Plato was cruel ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... once nor look around, so I went on singing. Nonsense words now, with no coherence or meaning, and all in French that a cowherd would ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... The Good Natured Man. When Goldsmith resisted this, 'he proposed a sort of arbitration,' and named as his arbitrator Whitehead the laureate. Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 41. It was of Whitehead's poetry that Johnson said 'grand nonsense is insupportable.' Ante, i. 402. The Good Natured Man was brought out by Colman, as well as She ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... "Adventurer! nonsense; no one has a right so to call a naval officer who has already made a name for himself, and will make a greater some day or other," answered Harry. "Don't let such an idea take possession of your mind. There are dozens of girls who would accept you gladly ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... is to go out to the edges of the cave sometimes and look out and see them, Outside Men and Women, in the distance. But of course, in one way or another, we Cave-men know all about them. And the thing we envy most in you Outside Men is the way you treat your women! By gee! You take no nonsense from them—you fellows are the real primordial, primitive men. ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... the foulest pen, Or fairest handled by the sons of men. 'Twill also show what is upon it writ, Be it wisely, or nonsense for want of wit, Each blot and blur it also will expose To thy next readers, be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... invention." His listener's face, which had worn for a moment a look of fright and bewilderment, gladdened swiftly to a gratitude that seemed the edge of an outburst of tears. " Yes," continued Coleman, " I am going to say something definite. I am going to say that it is the most imbecile bit of nonsense that has come within the range of my large newspaper experience. It is simply the aberration of a rather remarkable lunatic. It is no good; it is not worth the price of a cheese sandwich. I understand that its one feat has been to break your leg; if it ever goes ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... dark when I reached the village. Too late. I say, Lloyd," clapping his hands to keep warm, "come home. This is nonsense. ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... and apathetic minds of the late eighteenth century, seemed merely so much declamation to Alfieri. To him, who could conceive no virtues beyond independent truthfulness, such things were mere sentimental trash, mere hypocritical nonsense beneath which base men hid their baseness. And the baseness, unhappily, was there: baseness of absolute corruption, or of scandalous levity, even in the noblest. To Alfieri, a man like Beaumarchais, for all his quick philanthropy, his audacious outspokenness, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... us two thousand men in twenty-four hours. But it is a very different thing putting my name to a paper which is read by a department, and standing up before a meeting to make a speech. Napoleon himself failed there; at the 18th Brumaire he talked nothing but nonsense to the ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... better than the other men. I want to be happy. If that is not for me, then I want to make the time pass. I do not pretend. Men generally pretend very much to beautiful girls. But you would not believe such nonsense." ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... told you so, child," said she; "I told you it was all nonsense to try to dress up those dirty creatures; much good you have done, to be sure!" Anna almost cried with vexation, as she thought of all the time and labor she had wasted upon her benevolent task, and she walked home with ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... few years ago it used to be possible for a visitor with a "pull" in New Orleans to see some of the voudou performances and to have "a work made" for him, but the police have dealt so severely with those who believe in this barbarous nonsense, that it is practised in these times only ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... like a thatch sloping outward, conduct the sweat of the brow, by which a man earns his bread, away around the outer cover, that it may not enter the eye and destroy the sight. If it were preposterous nonsense to say that electricity, or magnetism, or odyle, contrived and made a little bracelet box, how much more absurd to ascribe the making of the cavity of the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... through college, but I had a relative who was famous as a teacher of rhetoric in one of our universities, and especially for taking the nonsense out of sophomorical young fellows who could not say anything without rigging it up in showy and sounding phrases. I think I learned from him to express myself in good old-fashioned English, and without making as much fuss ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... neighbors are shamefully compelled to be content with the pure element. Only equalize property, they say, and neither would drink Champagne or water, but both would have brandy, a consummation worthy of centuries of struggle to attain." He had the sense to declare that all this was nonsense, but added, that the Agrarians, though not so numerous or so widely diffused as to create immediate alarm, were numerous in New York, where their influence was strongly felt in the civic elections. Elsewhere he predicted the coming of a "panic" time, when workingmen would be thrown out of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... once her body stiffened and she pulled away from him. Then she laughed—"What nonsense! I must have been having a bad dream ... it's nothing. Sorry I bothered ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... you going to be a lawyer? But to be a great painter! And America has so few of them." She knew quite well that she was talking nonsense, but she was aware, through her own indifference to the topic that he was not minding what she said, but was trying to bring himself into talk with Alice again. The girl persistently ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... or two"—such is the conclusion of his Christmas letter of 1893, when Page was thirty-eight, with a growing family of his own—"till I've filled the paper—all such little news and less nonsense as most gossip and most letters are made of. But it is for you to read between the lines. That's where the love lies, dear mother. I wish you were here Christmas; we should welcome you as nobody else in the world can be welcomed. But wherever you are and though all the rest have the joy ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... selfishness of desiring from him the sacrifice of liberty for life, to say nothing of his affections, merely to enable his family to make a splendid figure in London, Lord Clonbrony exclaimed, "That's all nonsense!—cursed nonsense! That's the way we are obliged to state the thing to your mother, my dear boy, because I might talk her deaf before she would understand or listen to any thing else; but, for my own share, I don't care a rush if ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... seriously, "there is no time for nonsense. My friend has his boat down the river fishing. Your son's boat is guarded by your son's men. There is only this one canoe; what is Mr. Paul ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... follow far less cheerfully. I could not help thinking there was something unwilling, almost resentful, in his manner, so that I felt prepared to pay him back in his own coin. Although I might look as dirty and as much like a tramp as Jacintha had suggested, I was not going to stand any nonsense. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... medieval and feudal State. She is the Paradise of the Junker. But Prussian Junkerthum is not merely a squirearchy of independent landowners. Mr. Bernard Shaw, in his "Common Sense about the War," in which one ounce of common sense is mixed with three ounces of nonsense, would make us believe that there is little difference between German Junkerthum and British Junkerthum, and that there is little to choose between the English Junker, Sir Edward Grey, and a Pomeranian ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... won't strike with the others—absumlutely won't! After the rest of 'em are through, in she comes a minute late, chiming away on her own hook, all independent like, as if she was runnin' the world. You know what that means. Mr. Hawley, sir, he won't stand for no nonsense like that—not for a second. If there's any strikin' to be done round here, or chimin' either, it's got to be done in chorus or not at all. Ain't he been well-nigh a year trainin' those clocks? We've got 'em down now almighty fine too—'cept ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... every corner of the earth, and finding everywhere a response to it. Yes; it is absurd; but, wise Mr. Calculator, counter of heads, you have forgotten God in your estimate of whether it is reasonable or unreasonable. Again, take the Christian ideal of absolute perfection of character. 'What nonsense to talk as if any man could ever come to that.' Yes!—as if any man could come to that, I grant you. But if God is with him, the nonsense is to suppose that he will not come to it. Here is a row of cyphers as long as your arm. They mean nothing. Put ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... which we will now descend, is noteworthy for the activity and commercial enterprise shown by the subjects of the Mikado. It is remarkable, also, to notice the curious co-existence of sense and nonsense in the Jap's adoption of foreign customs. For instance, you see the generality of them dressed in European clothes, but nevertheless still sticking to the ancient custom of removing their boots on entering ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... "It's nonsense, you know," said William King, "that Philly doesn't take that boy. He's head over heels in love ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... are again with your nonsense," exclaimed lady Chia, sneeringly; "how could you have ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... it is! It's crazy nonsense. You've got pigeons in your loft, Loosh. Come on out and ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... preferment, gave lectures and orations, religious on Sundays, and political on Wednesdays; was described by Pope in the Dunciad as the Zany of his age, and represented by Hogarth upon a scaffold with a monkey by his side saying Amen. He edited a paper of nonsense called the Hip Doctor, and once attracted to his oratory an audience of shoemakers by announcing that he would teach a new and short way of making shoes; his way being to cut off the tops of boots. He ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... performance must be at an end! And—nobody had come to him!—They had all dreaded the breaking of the news. Even Sosha:—Then it had failed!—Failed.—Ah, that spark of hope! Good Heavens! Had it actually existed, after all? Why else this terrible pain? this sickness? This conscious pallor?—Nonsense! Had he dreamed of anything else for one moment? He tried, desperately, for a shred of philosophy; and then found himself pacing the floor, knees trembling, heart in throat, that sense of nauseated faintness boding little good to a man seeking ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... pre-possessing woman, with bold eyes and an obstinate mouth. There was, so to speak, "no nonsense about her." She was one of those women of coarse fibre, whose chief diversion consists in annoying the sensibilities of others. They exist more frequently in the middleclass than among the poor, whose common dependence teaches them forebearance if not pity, but they exist also among ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... that, in my state of lameness, it was with some difficulty I could overtake them. The effect this stupendous sight had upon Idris was to set him to his prayers, or rather to his charms; for, except the names of God and Mahomet, all the rest of his words were mere gibberish and nonsense. Ismael the Turk violently abused him for not praying in the words of the Koran, at the same time maintaining, with great apparent wisdom, that nobody had charms to stop these moving sands but ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... and I sent my photograph to my father. You talk nonsense, my friend. I drank tea, with cake and jam. Water is a fluid. I did not wish to drink the wine, for it had in it a certain muddiness. On the table were various sweetmeats. I ate a tasty omelette. When I travel anywhere ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... of polite literature in this island; and it was then found, that the immeasurable licentiousness, indulged or rather applauded at court, was more destructive to the refined arts, than even the cant, nonsense, and enthusiasm of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... to cut out the very thought or statement on which I especially pride myself, on which the whole argument rests, which binds every part together; and he coolly tells me that it is extravagant or far-fetched—not seeing that by leaving it out he has made nonsense of the rest. He is a man to rob an arch of its keystone, and then quietly to build ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... to the truth of the doctrines asserted by the persons who exhibit the phenomena. Now, men of science, as a rule, and the world at large, look on stories of this sort as myths, romances, false interpretations of subjective feelings, pious frauds, and absurd nonsense. Before expressing an opinion, it may be well to look over the facts, as they are called, which ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... then open the book again and go ahead with a new passage. Finally Mr. Chase came in; and presently Mr. Whitelaw Reid, and then the reading was interrupted. Mr. Stanton went to the door and beckoned me into the next room. I shall never forget his indignation at what seemed to him disgusting nonsense." ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... you sweep the court-yard?" "No," she answered; "I did not do it." Then the Rakshas walked round and round several times, with his nose up in the air, saying, "Some one is here now; I smell flesh and blood. Where can they be?" "Stuff and nonsense!" cried the Rakshas' wife. "You smell flesh and blood, indeed! Why, you have just been killing and eating a hundred thousand people. I should wonder if you didn't still smell flesh and blood!" They went on disputing, till at last the Rakshas gave it ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... explanation. I listened to whispered conversations in a salon where I was visiting, but could hear nothing; in order to do us better justice they waited until I had gone. I returned to Brigitte and told her that all these stories were mere nonsense; that it was foolish to notice them; that they could talk about us as much as they pleased and we would ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... declared, abruptly, "I am not going to spoil your dinner by keeping you here talking nonsense. Carry me back, please, Arnold. You must hurry up now and change your clothes. And, dear, you had better not come in and wish me good-night. Isaac went out this morning in one of his savage tempers, and he may be back at any moment. Carry me back now, and ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 13; 2 Pet. ii. 10; Acts xx. 38, and xxvi. 3; in all which places the word especially is used as a disjunctive particle, to distinguish one thing from another, without which distinction we shall but make nonsense in interpreting those places. And generally the best interpreters[70] do from this text conclude, that there were two sorts of elders, viz: the ruling elder, that only ruled; the preaching elder, that besides his ruling, labored in the word and ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
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