"Long-winded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... names of unimportant rivers, mountains, descriptions of all the frog ponds in Ethiopia, and other useless trash in the so-called geographies; in memorizing the obsolete rules of duodecimals, compound proportion, etc., in the arithmetic; long-winded, ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... halted, though not to take breath. Strong-limbed, long-winded lads like them—who could have "swarmed" in two minutes to the main truck of a man-o'-war—needed no such indulgence as that. Instead of one hundred feet of sloping sand, any one of them could have scaled Snowdon ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... off into a very long-winded discussion of the pros and cons of the case, which, however, we will spare the reader, and return to Willow Creek. The bed of the creek, near to the point where it joined the Red River, was a favourite resort of Master Tony. Thither he went that ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... A long-winded attorney was arguing a technical case before one of the judges of the superior court in a western state. He had rambled on in such a desultory way that it became very difficult to follow his line of thought, and the judge had just yawned ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... the afternoon; there were the lawyers of the Chastelet, the Court of Aids, the Court of Accounts, and the Parliament, to say nothing of the city authorities and other constituted bodies. The addresses were no short unmeaning things, like those uttered in our poor cold times, but good long-winded harangues, some in French, some in Latin, and they went on, one after the other, for three days consecutively. On the third day, when the royal patience must have been wellnigh exhausted, and the chancellor's talents at reply worn tolerably threadbare, the king would rise, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... on a verra useless job." On being asked what this useless work might be which engaged his pastor's time and attention, he answered, "He's gane to mak four men agree wha ne'er cast oot." The good-humoured and candid answer of a learned and rather long-winded preacher of the old school always appeared to me quite charming. The good man was far from being a popular preacher, and yet he could not reduce his discourses below the hour and a half. On being asked, as a gentle hint of their ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... sweetest Oratory. For he that names but FLETCHER must needs be Found guilty of a loud hyperbole. His fancy so transcendently aspires, He showes himselfe a witt, who but admires. Here are no volumes stuft with cheverle sence, The very Anagrams of Eloquence, Nor long-long-winded sentences that be, Being rightly spelld, but Witts Stenographie. Nor words, as voyd of Reason, as of Rithme, Only cesura'd to spin out the time. But heer's a Magazine of purest sence Cloathed in the newest Garbe of Eloquence. Scenes that are quick ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... herself gently from side to side. The poor creature paid a marked attention to the interesting young woman I have just mentioned. At last, they dropped off one by one to bed, that they might be up early the next morning for the Lough, with the exception of some half-dozen, more long-winded than the rest whose voices I could hear at their sixth rosary, in the rapid elevated tone peculiar to Catholic devotion, until ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... man is made of soft, kindergarten clay, and all a wife has to do is to sit down and mould him as she pleases. Well, some men may be like that, but Peter isn't. The family never really have forgiven me for calling their darling "Charles Edward" Peter. I perfectly loathe that long-winded Walter-Scotty name, and I don't care how many grandfathers it's descended from. I'm sorry, of course, if it hurts their feelings, but as long as I don't object to their calling him what THEY like, I don't see why they mind. And as for my managing ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... interrupted Aunt Millicent, "I do hope it will be a really brief address. You're so long-winded. That speech you made when the school-house was dedicated was twice too ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... style which gradually steals upon the reader and subjects him to incalculable minor effects, is not the property of any one age, but of every age; and Victorian prose in general, and Borrow's in particular, attains it. "Wild Wales" is rough in grain; it can be long-winded, slovenly and dull: but it can also be read; and if the whole, or any large portion, be read continuously it will give a lively and true impression of a beautiful, diverse country, of a distinctive people, and of a number of vivid men and women, including ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... compliments and civilities upon their hostess, much to the disgust of the Chevalier. At parting, the Duke renewed the politeness he had displayed so abundantly the previous evening, and delayed the others by his long-winded flatteries. When, at last, they left the house, and were two or three leagues away from it, the Chevalier de Coislin said, that, in spite of all this politeness, he had reason to believe that their pretty hostess would ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... between seven and seven-fifteen, apology on his lips. A man had come in late to buy a car and they had talked ... never was there such a long-winded customer. He took Marie's arm lightly in his hand, hurried her in, and chose a table, the nearest vacant one. He dropped into his seat and passed his hand over his brow and eyes to brush away the daze of fatigue. He was tired and very, very hungry, too ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... reverence' would be tired with delivering a long-winded mid-day discourse, Mrs. Condiment, sir, would take him into her own tent—make him lie down on her own sacred cot, and set my niece to bathing his head with cologne and her maid to fanning him, while she herself prepared an iced sherry cobbler for his reverence! Aren't you ashamed of yourself, ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... away Chain'd there among the mountains; till, forsooth, Terrified at your treachery foregone, You spirit me up here, I know not how, Popinjay-like invest me like yourselves, Choke me with scent and music that I loathe, And, worse than all the music and the scent, With false, long-winded, fulsome compliment, That 'Oh, you are my subjects!' and in word Reiterating still obedience, Thwart me in deed at every step I take: When just about to wreak a just revenge Upon that old arch-traitor ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... about equally. The only use of old people like me is to see that the young 'uns don't get the proportions all wrong, too much love an' not enough work, or the other way round. Henry's very likely to get them all wrong, an' I want to see that he doesn't. Now, you understand me, don't you? I'm a long-winded man, an' it's hard to make out what I'm drivin' at, but that can't be helped. Everybody has a nature, an' I have mine, ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... gets killed—and not any too soon. If it only were practicable to kill him in real life! A story—to be called The Passing of Polonius—in which a king issues a decree condemning to death every long-winded, didactic person in the kingdom, irrespective of rank, and is himself instantly arrested and decapitated. The man who suspects his own tediousness is yet ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... on the Duke of Doncaster! Come, come, Mr. Deuceace, don't you be running your rigs upon me; I ain't the man to be bamboozl'd by long-winded stories about dukes and duchesses. You think I don't know you; every man knows you and your line of country. Yes, you're after young Dawkins there, and think to pluck him; but you shan't,—no, by —— you ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pass unnoticed, far from it; and from time to time we find the name of Sidney reappearing in French books, while the giants of English literature continued entirely unknown on the continent. When Charles Sorel satirized the long-winded romances of his time in his "Berger Extravagant," he did not forget Sidney, who figures among the authors alternately praised and criticized in the disputation between Clarimond and Philiris. The criticism is not very severe, and compared with ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... neighbouring kings heard at length of Tushratta's financial success and were naturally envious. An extract will give the reader a more definite notion of this royal correspondence with its stylisms and turns of thought. The following is taken from Letter VIII. in the British Museum edition. The long-winded introduction was already a fixed convention, and occurs in all the letters from whatever country, but the declaration of affection ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... least none except the lamb scrape are worth talking about, Harnett, so don't read me one of your long-winded lectures; and, now that I have hit the knot in the barn, I promise not to shoot at anything within half a mile of the place. I'm going down to town for a while, and when I get through with what I have on hand, ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... long-winded way of saying that Christian realised that she had to restore confidence in Larry's young friend, and that she proceeded forthwith to do so. She would have laughed at the thought that anyone could be afraid of ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... minister preached at Bay Bend His long-winded sermon quite through to the end, Unmindful there sat in the Somerville pew A stranger whose pale handsome countenance drew All eyes from his own reverend self; nor suspected What Ruth and her brother too plainly detected That ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... or eight miles, then another would relieve him, and so on, the idea being to get outside of them and so gradually round them in to the grazing herd. We had special horses kept and used for this purpose, fast and long-winded, as the pace had to be great and one must be utterly regardless of dog and badger holes, etc. This kind of work we kept up for a couple of weeks, some days being successful, some days getting a run but securing nothing. We made a satisfactory gathering of all the gentler and more tractable ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... listening first to the Prefect's political and society talk, then to stories of the General's campaigns. Under the influence of the despised wine of Anjou, Monsieur de Mauves, whose temper needed no sweetening, became a little sleepy, prosy, and long-winded. General Ratoneau on his side was mightily cheered, and showed quite a new animation: long before the meal ended, he was talking more than the other three put together. It was he who had been the hero of Eylau, of Friedland, of Wagram; the Emperor and the Marshals were nowhere. ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... himself on the breast, and said: "See now, what a great fool I am, not to have known it without telling, instead of making long-winded talk about myself. Come quickly, dear maiden, and leave thine ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... was Pete Lytell, who wore a gray derby on the side of his head. He always had money and he was customarily cheerful, so Anthony held aimless, long-winded conversation with him through many afternoons of the summer and fall. Lytell, he found, not only talked but reasoned in phrases. His philosophy was a series of them, assimilated here and there through an active, thoughtless life. He had phrases about Socialism—the ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Mr. Omer. 'That's right. And so, young gentleman,' he added, after a few moments' further rubbing of his chin, 'that you may not consider me long-winded as well as short-breathed, I believe that's all ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... tract in Dallas, and he is to meet Wharton and myself at your law-shop to-morrow. It is important to make an arrangement with Jeffords—his example will be felt by Brownsell and Gibbon. We may escape a long-winded lawsuit, after all, to your great discomfiture and my gain. But ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... penalty, not exceeding a certain sum, as in the estimation of the presiding magistrate should be held to be a proper compensation for the injury to his reputation suffered by the plaintiff. When the clerk drew breath at the end of the long-winded clause, I inquired if the law in question made no counter-provision for cases which might occur where, the abusive term being richly deserved, it could be no crime to apply it. The schoolmaster, who, despite his patched habiliments, was a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... irked by this method, who thinks of me as a crude and pushing person, disposed to meddle in the affairs of others, here is where that reader will have his satisfaction and revenge. For if ever a troublesome puppet was jerked suddenly off the stage—if ever a long-winded orator was effectively snuffed out—I was that puppet and that orator. I stop and think—shall I describe how I paced up and down the pier, respectfully but emphatically watched by the secretary? And all the melodramatic plots I conceived, ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... complimental courtships drest up in critical rarities are meer strangers to them. Plain wit comes nearest to their genius; so that he that intends to court a Maryland girle, must have something more than the tautologies of a long-winded speech to carry on his design, or else he may fall under the contempt of her frown ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... criticize disembodied spirits who do no worse than "revisit the pale glimpses of the moon." I have never heard of a ghost robbing other than its own grave. They are not addicted to despoiling widows and orphans, then putting up long-winded prayers. They do not sing "Jesus lover of my soul" on Sunday, then sell that same soul to the devil for six-bits on Monday. No ghost, so far as I know, was ever accused of lying about his neighbor, fracturing the Seventh Commandment or beating his butcher-bills. They ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... thought. And just as the buffoon and satyr are foreign to him in body and conscience, so Aristophanes and Petronius are untranslatable for him. Everything ponderous, viscous, and pompously clumsy, all long-winded and wearying species of style, are developed in profuse variety among Germans—pardon me for stating the fact that even Goethe's prose, in its mixture of stiffness and elegance, is no exception, as a reflection of the "good old time" to which it belongs, and ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... to make this short addition to my treatise, founded on new reasons; few persons caring to peruse long-winded discourses; whereas short tracts have a chance of being read by many; and I wish that many may see this addition, to the end that its ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... The long-winded are the dullest of dull reviewers, but the most pernicious are the wielders of cliches and platitudes. Is there somewhere a reviewer's manual, like the manual of correct social phrases which some one has recently published? I would believe it from the evidence of a hundred ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... though I knew well enough what it was. I wanted him to say, and have done with it; his circumlocution was getting wearisome. But he was one of those old men who won't allow their cattle to be hurried, and he went on in his long-winded way. ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... Then he began to reassure his host about the child, pointing out to him that her education had been neglected till then, and so on. But poor Mr. Sesemann, unfortunately, did not get his answer, and had to listen to very long-winded explanations of the child's character. At last Mr. Sesemann got up, saying: "Excuse me, Mr. Candidate, but I must go ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... the Duke's somewhat long-winded series of questions had gone very far Mr. Sabin grasped the fact that the servants had been tampered with. Without wasting any more time he took a somewhat hurried leave and drove back to the hotel. One of the ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her family, why I was not dancing. I can remember blushing hotly at the question, but at the same time feeling—for all my efforts to prevent it—a self-satisfied smile steal over my face as I began talking, in the most inflated and long-winded French, such rubbish as even now, after dozens of years, it shames me to recall. It must have been the effect of the music, which, while exciting my nervous sensibility, drowned (as I supposed) the less intelligible portion of my utterances. ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... disappears beneath the board, and the problem is to place yours nearest to where his will appear again. Sometimes he would come up unexpectedly on the opposite side of me, having apparently passed directly under the boat. So long-winded was he and so unweariable, that when he had swam farthest he would immediately plunge again, nevertheless; and then no wit could divine where in the deep pond, beneath the smooth surface, he might be speeding his way like ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... three rods under water," said Frank. "If I was half as long-winded as you are, I should keep company with the fishes ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... once started he raced. Long-legged, light-flanked, long-winded, and underfed, he had the adaptability for speed of a little race-horse. Jerome Edwards was quite a famous boy in the village for his prowess in running. No other boy could equal him. Marvellous stories were told about it. "Jerome Edwards, he can run half a mile in five minutes ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... remember all the oral explanations. Only a few weeks after each of these audiences the suitors are individually notified of the result. The emperor's sense of etiquette does not allow him to give any sign of impatience during the interview, though some of the visitors are as long-winded and importunate as Mark Twain pretends to have been at one of President Grant's receptions. The emperor answers the German, Hungarian, Tzech, Croat or Italian each in the suitor's own tongue. It is quite possible that in the preliminary registry of the names and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... sent out by Raleigh for the specific purpose of inquiring into and reporting upon the natural productions of Virginia. He returned in 1586, and in 1588 published the results of his researches in a thin quarto with an extremely long-winded title beginning "A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia" and continuing ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... Waffle's rather long-winded record of her life he dwells for several chapters upon the Papist plots which menaced her position at Court. After a visit to several of London's museums, I have discovered that most of the facts he quotes are naught but fallacies. There were undoubtedly plots, but nothing in the least Papist. ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... defrauded of his due nourishment. Most of them also value themselves on being descended from their Jugglers, who are a sort of men that pretend to foretel futurity by a thousand ridiculous contorsions and grimaces, and by frightful and long-winded howlings. ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... petition," said Tronchon, seating himself opposite to me at the table, "it is soon done; for, mark me, lad, these things must always be short; if thou be long-winded, they put thee away, and tell some of the clerks to look after thee—and there's an end of it. Be brief, therefore, and next—be legible—write in a good, large round hand; just as, if thou wert speaking, thou wouldst talk with a fine, clear, distinct voice. Well, then, begin thus, 'Republic ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... lady, and others like her, the little train and tramway by which alone such people can penetrate to those soul-stirring scenes. They are at least as sensitive to the beauty of the mountains as are the most muscular, most long-winded, and most sun-blistered of our friends—the acrobats of the rope ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... no," replied Canalis; "he is wordy; he's long-winded, a plodder in argument, and a good logician; but he doesn't understand the higher logic, that of events and circumstances; consequently he has never had, and never will have, ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... in a very long-winded manner, to explain how the burgomaster's wife in Jacobshagen said that her maid said that Provost Bamberg's maid said, that while she was sweeping his study the other morning, she heard the provost's ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... influence on the now living mind. Most of those French lights of the then firmament are gone out. Forgotten altogether; or recognized, like Rollin and others, for polished dullards, university big-wigs, and long-winded commonplace persons, deserving nothing but oblivion. To Montesquieu,—not yet called "Baron de Montesquieu" with ESPRIT DES LOIS, but "M. de Secondat" with (Anonymous) LETTRES PERSANES, and already known to the world for a person of sharp audacious eyesight,—it does not appear that Friedrich ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... Author's part" (and therefore in a mere fraction of whatever represented the extremely small edition of the work), may be sought the "Prefatory Explication, made for the Benefit of My Friends, Male and Female." In recounting the origin of the manual, its author is candid, but at the same time too long-winded for quoting entire. Enough to say, as the substitute for a lengthy tale of facts, that prior to the year 1731 the author of "The Square of Sevens," Mr. Robert Antrobus, "a Gentleman of Bath," was called in the month of November to pass ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... from his vest pocket and began a long-winded recital of some figures in which I was not particularly interested. Mr. Bundercombe, however, appeared to be greatly impressed by what ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the papers, he read slowly several sentences from a description of a great fire, with some tolerably long-winded newspaper words in them. When he paused, and asked for the slate, there it all stood, perfectly spelt, well written, and with all the stops and capitals in ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 'xactly sure o' the precise words in this case, but that's the sentiment, and everybody knows that sentiment is everything in poetry, whether ye understand it or not. Fire away, leftenant, an' don't be long-winded if ye can ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... slit of the windpipe. This sort of valve has a very free motion, and easily turns any way, so that by shaking on that half-opened orifice, it performs the softest modulations of the voice. This instance is sufficient to show, by-the-by, and without entering long-winded details of anatomy, what a marvellous art there is in the frame of the inward parts. And indeed the organ I have described is the most perfect of all musical instruments, nor have these any perfection, but so ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... that is because you're so long-winded. Getting money from you is like drawing your eye-teeth. But, come, come; you're improving, you're getting accustomed to paying punctually. That's a great ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... horribly long-winded. You didn't dance, but came to see me in a new tie, new linen, gloves, scented and pomatumed. I assure you that you were very anxious to get married yourself; it was written on your face, and I assure you a most unseemly expression it was. If I did not mention ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... resolved to vary his visits, and, starting with a basis of two a week, sat trying to solve the mathematical chances of selecting the same as Kate Nugent; calculations which were not facilitated by a long-winded account from Mr. Wilks of certain interesting ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... desultory and long-winded narrative of the Laird was interrupted by the voice of some one ascending the stairs from the kitchen story, and singing at full pitch of voice. The high notes were too shrill for a man, the low seemed too deep for a woman. The words, as far ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that this siege lasts, convinces me more and more that General Trochu is not the right man in the right place. He writes long-winded letters, utters Spartan aphorisms, and complains of his colleagues, his generals, and his troops. The confidence which was felt in him is rapidly diminishing. He is a good, respectable, honest man, without ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... help them in theological tradition, and were thrown upon their own wit. In humorous dialogue and naive sentiment the lusty burgesses of the fifteenth century were thoroughly at home, and the comedy and pathos of these scenes must have been as welcome a relief to the spectators, from the |133| long-winded solemnity of many of the plays, as they are to modern readers. In the York mysteries the shepherds make uncouth exclamations at the song of the angels and ludicrously try to imitate it. The Chester shepherds talk in a very ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... watching for the opportunity that never came, and consoling himself with the fact that no one else seemed more fortunate in winning her favour than he. The only strange male who attained to the privilege of addressing her was a long-winded and elderly gentleman of the British perpetual-travelling type, at least one representative of which is found on every transcontinental train, and it was plain enough that he bored ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... August 19, 1784.] The more lawless whites were as little amenable to authority as the Indians themselves; and at the very moment when a peace was being negotiated one side or the other would commit some brutal murder. While the chiefs and old Indians were delivering long-winded speeches to the Peace Commissioners, bands of young braves committed horrible ravages among the lonely settlements. [Footnote: State Dept. MSS., No. 56, pp. 279 and 333; No. 60, p. 297, etc.] Now a ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Soon mellowing," though he was careful on every page to make everything seem perfectly straight and proper for the suspicious perusal of his English wife; but any nineteenth-century reader can read between the lines. His famous long-winded eulogies of the Boston virgin, the wife, the widow, "Madam Brick the flower of Boston," and the half widow "Parte per Pale, Madam Toy," whose husband was at sea; and his long rides with one or the other of them a-pillion-back behind ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... extremely well armed. Above all, they are celebrated for owning great numbers of horses; which they mark, and then suffer to range in droves in their most fertile plains. These horses are principally of the pony breed; but remarkably stout and long-winded. They are brought in great numbers to the establishments of the Hudson's Bay Company, and sold for ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... by those who have the time and the physical and mental strength, if only because they reveal a man thinking on wrong lines while he is doing on right ones; but they are terribly long-winded, and many weary pages are devoted to demonstrations of the obvious or the actually fallacious. Mr. W. Ashton Ellis has given many years of a valuable life to translating them into something which is not English and not German. For the ordinary music-lover I believe the above ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... escape of being a great book, though it is ill calculated for the hasty readers of to-day. Indeed, the defects are serious enough. The class of writing to which it belongs demands a certain dramatic picturesqueness to point the moral effectively. Not only the long-winded sentences, but the slow evolution of thought and the deliberation with which he works out his pictures of misery, make the general effect dull beside such books as 'Candide' or 'Gulliver's Travels.' A touch of epigrammatic exaggeration is very much needed; and yet anybody who has ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... this bosom of thine; it is all fill'd up with midriff. Charge an honest woman with picking thy pocket! why, thou whoreson, impudent, emboss'd rascal, if there were anything in thy pocket but tavern-reckonings, and one poor pennyworth of sugar-candy to make thee long-winded,—if thy pocket were enrich'd with any other injuries but these, I am a villain: and yet you will stand to it; you will not pocket-up wrong. Art thou ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... length in other volumes by Ferdinand Bac (who confounds Ludwig I with Maximilian II) and the equally unreliable Eugene de Mirecourt and Auguste Papon. German writers, on the other hand, have, if apt to be long-winded, at least avoided the more obvious pitfalls. Among the books and pamphlets (many of them anonymous) of Teutonic origin, the following will repay research: Die Graefin Landsfeld (Gustav Bernhard); Lola Montez, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... could not see from the piers where the king's array was. Then Erling drew the whole fleet in where the wind carried the fire, and shot at the enemy. When the townspeople saw that the fire was approaching their houses, and many were wounded by the bowmen, they resolved to send the priest Hroald, the long-winded speaker, to Erling, to beg him to spare them and the town; and they dissolved the array in favour of Hakon, as soon as Hroald told them their prayer was granted. Now when the array of towns-people had dispersed, the men ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... was ready to do a good turn if I could, an' bound for a lark anyhow. But we'd smuggled in novels and story-papers till our heads was full of what fine things we'd do. They didn't give us better things. There was books—yes, plenty of 'em—but mostly long-winded stuff about fellers that died young, bein' too good for this world. There wasn't anybody to tell us we'd a right to some fun, and the Lord meant us to enjoy life, nor to get us busy in some way that would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... stayed then with such boon companions as Tommy Lawson, my Lord Halifax, Sir Jasper Lemarck, little Geordie Chichester, aye, and old Sidney Godolphin of the Treasury; for with all his staid ways and long-winded budgets he could drain a cup with the best of us, and was as keen on a main of cocks as on a committee of ways and means. Well, it was rare sport while it lasted, and sink me if I wouldn't do the same again if I had my time once more. It ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in those languages too, if you will please her. If precise, you must feast all the silenced brethren, once in three days; salute the sisters; entertain the whole family, or wood of them; and hear long-winded exercises, singings and catechisings, which you are not given to, and yet must give for: to please the zealous matron your wife, who for the holy cause, will cozen you, over and above. You begin to sweat, sir! but this is not half, i'faith: you may do your pleasure, notwithstanding, ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... to apologize for this long-winded confession, which indeed is "most impertinent" to the play, as he admits, though most interesting to him and to us, for he is simply Shakespeare telling us his own feelings at the time. The gentle magician then hears from Ariel how the shipwreck ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... Federal Constitutions which justify the predetermined course. This being, as a rule, true, the business of the historian is to understand the influences which led to the first, not the second, decision of the Representative or Senator or President or even Justice of the Supreme Court. Hence long-winded speeches or tortuous decisions of courts have not been studied so closely as the statistics of the cotton or tobacco crops, the reports of manufacturers, and the conditions of the frontier, which determined more of the votes of members of Congress than ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... he gazed into her face he forgot where he was, did not even wonder why his brother had suddenly turned away and, beginning some long-winded speech, had rushed after a man who hastily covered his head and tried to escape; he did not notice that thousands of eyes were fixed on him, and among them his mother's; he could merely repeat: "thanks" and "Dada"—the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... you of my long-winded tragedy? No quibbling about Nero having really died in a drain, four years after the murder of Aggrippina; no learned disquisitions, if you please, as to his innocence of Rome's fire, a counterpart to our slander on the Papacy ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the door. With a smile of good humour the god look'd at each, For he found that they came from Blunt, Chapman, and Neech.{7} Blunt sent him a treatise of science profound, Showing how rotten eggs were distinguish'd from sound; Some "Remarks on Debates," and some long-winded stories, Of society Whigs, and society Tories; And six sheets and a half of a sage dissertation, On the present most wicked and dull generation. From Chapman came lectures on Monk, and on piety; On Simeon, and learning, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... waters have laved the dust that it might not soil the uniform of Washington as he rode past on his snow-white charger, amid the acclamations of the multitude. I have seen Hull and his tars pass up the street, bearing the stripes and stars in triumph from the war of the ocean. I have heard long-winded orators spout over my head in emulation of my craft, "in one weak, washy, everlasting flood." I have seen many a military, many a civic pageant. The last I witnessed was, as Dick Swiveller remarks, ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... herald verbose is And gives us large doses Of high-sounding rodomontade, You'll find they spoke so In the long, long ago, So blame not—O, blame not the bard. But while we are prating Our herald stands waiting In a perfectly terrible fume, So, my dear, here and now, The poor chap we'll allow His long-winded speech to resume: ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... soft spot to sleep in, and I sees this desolation and ruination. I've lived myself in desolation and ruination; I knows many a fellow-creetur that's forced to live life long in desolation and ruination; and I sits me down and takes pity on it, as I casts my eyes about. Then comes up the long-winded one as I told you of, from that gate, and spins himself out like a silkworm concerning the Donkey (if my Donkey at home will excuse me) as has made it all—made it of his own choice! And tells me, if you please, of his likewise choosing to go ragged ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... Merton lacked; all that the Rollo books never had. We might have told them that though the Leatherstocking Tales and Robinson Crusoe and Two Years Before the Mast and Ivanhoe were all well enough in their way, the trouble with them was that they mainly were so long-winded. It took so much time to get to where the first punch was, whereas Ned Buntline or Col. Prentiss Ingraham would hand you an exciting jolt on the very first page, and sometimes in the ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... dawn, with a "sweet concert," and to the instruments of Fiorello's musicians tunes "a deploring dump." It is the cavatina "Ecco ridente in cielo." The musicians, rewarded by Almaviva beyond expectations, are profuse and long-winded in their expression of gratitude, and are gotten rid of with difficulty. The Count has not yet had a glimpse of Rosina, who is in the habit of breathing the morning air from the balcony of her prison house, and is about to despair when Figaro, barber and Seville's factotum, appears trolling ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... fancy, fog, and moonshine. Though he could confine himself to facts with modest brevity when speaking of his achievements to white people—as we have already noticed—the Fighting Nigger, it must be owned, was something of a long-winded boaster, with a proneness to slide off into the fabulous, when blowing his own trumpet for the entertainment of his colored admirers, who bolted whatever monstrosity he might choose to toss into their greedy chops. But let ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... sudden brilliance reaches The playwright's mouthing shams, And the long-winded speeches Grow brisk as epigrams. My heart, in sudden clover, With smiles adorns my face, For, when the Act is over, I need not keep my place. I'll chase my fears, like foxes, When next the curtain falls— I'll then be in the boxes, Though ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... conversation of country people, generally speaking, and an occasional, very occasional, character or oddity apart, is undeniably dull, and I hope it will not be imputed to me for hardness of heart that, after some long-winded colloquy or endless reminiscence, sententious and trivial, I have thought that Gray's famous line should really have been written—"the long and ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... claim a more perfect continuity of office than the rector or vicar. There was a time when the incumbents were forced to leave their cure and give place to an intruding minister appointed by the Cromwellian Parliament. But the clerk remained on to chant his "Amen" to the long-winded prayers of some black-gowned Puritan. That is a very realistic scene sketched by Sir Walter Besant when he describes the old clerk, an ancient man and rheumatic, hobbling slowly through the village, key in hand, to ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... his most persistent correspondents was his son-in-law, Nathaniel Sparhawk, a thrifty merchant, with a constant eye to business, who generally began his long-winded epistles with a bulletin concerning the health of "Mother Pepperrell," and rarely ended them without charging his father-in-law with some commission, such as buying for him the cargo of a French prize, if he could ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... out: By Bacchus, he was right to forswear talk, if he designed to make such long-winded discourses as would have spoiled all mirth and conversation; but I do not think there is the same reason to forbid philosophy as to take away rhetoric from our feasts. For philosophy is quite of another nature; ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... lead. "They jobbed us. There were but three or four of the Cross men there when they voted a strike, and before that there wasn't a man that hadn't taken the floor and fought for your scale. The meeting dragged for some reason, because old Bells kept bringing up arguments—long-winded ones—as if holding ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... when that affair was over. I didn't pester her with long-winded scrawls. She changed her mind, and I've changed mine; and so we're equal. I've paid her, and she can pay me ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... through the ol' man's lead, an' she took her revenge out on Hawthorn. She would lean forward an' hold his eye, an' say, in the sweetest voice you ever heard, "Oh. Mr. Hawthorn, I want to tell you somethin' that happened at school;" an' then she would start in an' tell some long-winded tale 'at didn't have no more point than a mush room, an' as she told along she would call his attention to certain details as though they was goin' to figger in at the wind-up. When she would reach the end she would break out in a peal o' spontunious laughter; while ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... obscurity of a country parish for the public fame of a London pulpit, by reason of a certain gift of rhetorical power, the value of which it is impossible to estimate to-day. Such of his sermons as are still extant are prosy, long-winded, dogmatic absurdities, overloaded with periphrastic illustrations in scriptural language. They are meaningless to a degree, which would make one wonder at the docility and patience of a seventeenth century congregation, if one had not witnessed a similar ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... is to be held when the men come in. Then some raw meat is produced, if there is any to be had, and after eating pipes are lighted and the subject for discussion is approached, conversation gradually drifting in that direction. Esquimaux never do anything in a hurry, and these long-winded roundabout chats are exceedingly congenial to their tastes. So imbued do they become with this idea that even "Joe," notwithstanding his long residence with civilized people, could not ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... comparative unhappiness. With his father, the superlative degree returned infallibly. He knew it by every shrinking fibre in his body, he knew it by the sudden dizzy whirling of his brain, at the mere thought of that calamity. An hour and a half, perhaps an hour and three-quarters, if the doctor was long-winded, and then would begin again that active agony from which, even in the dull ache of the present, he shrunk as from the bite of fire. He saw, in a vision, the family pew, the somnolent cushions, the Bibles, the psalm-books, Maria with her smelling-salts, ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... scarcely any better training, rhetorical as well as logical, than the task of construing Thucydides into genuine English; but the flat, vague, long-winded Greek-English and Latin-English imposture that is often tolerated in our examinations and is allowed to pass current for genuine English, diminishes instead of increasing the power that our pupils should possess over their ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... lightness of heart throughout his later years, alternating with attacks of morbid despondency. He is usually very susceptible to feminine charm, an ardent but unstable lover, whose passions are apt to be as shortlived as they are violent. Story-telling and long-winded discussions give him keen enjoyment, for he is garrulous, metaphysical, and argumentative. In money matters careless and extravagant, dilatory and venal in affairs; fond, especially in the peasant class, of singing, dancing, and carousing; but his ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... married a Smith. Was that the Smith who kept a dancing and boxing place near London Bridge? Were you born in England?" I told the old mother all I knew about myself and my relations. You know that no Gorgios are so long-winded on genealogies as old mothers in Rom. When people don't write them down in their family Bibles, they carry them, extended, in their heads. Que la main droit perd recueille ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... mother ended her long-winded harangue; which I had hardly patience to listen to. In the course o' the week, the faither and brothers o' Miss Jenny Thompson called upon me, to see why I had not fulfilled my engagement, by taking her before the minister, and declaring her to be my wife. I stood before them ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... of this long-winded digression is not to excite sympathy on behalf of Logotheti, but to forestall surprise at some of the things he did when he had convinced himself that of all the women he had ever met, Margaret Donne was the one that suited him best, and that she must be ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... of the door, while the duke began pacing up and down the room, muttering and growling, and balling his fists, and jingling his shining medals. He kicked over an inoffensive hassock and his favorite hound, and I don't know how many long-winded German oaths he let go. (It's a mighty hard language to swear in, especially when a man's ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... other, and yet here the tradesman must have a great care to keep it up too; for though it be the easiest article to keep up credit in, yet even in this article the tradesman may lose his credit, and then he is undone at once; and this is by growing (what in the language of trade is called) long-winded, putting off and putting off continually, till he will bear dunning; then his credit falls, his dealer that trusted him perhaps a thousand pounds previously, that esteemed him as good as ready money, now grows sick of him, declines him, ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... talk that he hesitated to interrupt. The 'cellist, a greasy, little fellow with a mop of touzled hair, was relating an adventure he had had the night before. His droll way of telling it was more amusing than the long-winded story, and he himself was more tickled by it than was the violinist, a lanky German-American boy, with oily black hair and a pimpled face. Throughout, both tuned their instruments assiduously, with that air of inattention common ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... you hear statesmen and orators speaking in their familiar tones. You are mixed up with office-seekers, wire-pullers, inventors, artists, poets, prosers, (including editors, army-correspondents, attaches of foreign journals, and long-winded talkers,) clerks, diplomatists, mail-contractors, railway-directors, until your own identity is lost among them. Occasionally you talk with a man whom you have never before heard of, and are struck by the brightness of a thought, and fancy that there is more wisdom hidden among the obscure ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... far better to drop them from the organization, for they are bound to do more harm than good if they are retained. On the other hand, you will recognize the temptation to whisper which the performer feels while you are giving a long-winded explanation of some pet theory of yours, and you will accordingly cut down the amount of talking you do to the minimum. A good rule to follow is this: "Talk little at the rehearsal, but when you do talk, be sure that every one ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... Judge Marshall," Dundee replied courteously, but his pulses were hammering. What, in God's name, did this long-winded old fool have to tell him?... "You have some information you believe may be ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... And read the long-winded, yet really beautiful old obituary notices; the simple news of battles and high deeds; the fiery, yet pedantic, political editorials. Oh, no one knows anything about Father Knickerbocker until he has read the same newspapers that Father Knickerbocker ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... offensive as the word blackguard does. The emptiness of the person to whom it applies is very harmless. Its etymon blague (bladder, tobacco-bag), the pouch, which smoking voluptuaries use to deposit their tobacco, is perfectly symbolic of the inane, bombastic, windy, and long-winded speeches and sayings of the blagueur. Every French commercial traveller, buss-tooter, and Parisian jarvy is one. When he deports himself with modesty, and shows a gentlemanly tact in his peculiar avocation, we call him a craqueur (a cracker). "Ancient Pistol" was the king of blagueurs; Falstaff, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... his daughter should not have any man who had not proved by more than mushroom or retail success in business that he was able and likely to better her fortune. Miss Millicent must plainly either be run away with, or fairly won on old Hopkins's plan of wholesale, long-winded business success. Miss Millicent's good looks, if they did not amount to beauty, did, nevertheless, add something to the attractiveness of her vast pecuniary prospects. Chip had obtained the young lady's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... side of the convention." These annual gatherings were very largely in the nature of mutual admiration societies among the men, who consumed much of the time in complimenting each other and the rest of it in long-winded orations. During this one Miss Anthony arose and said that, as all members had the same right to speak, she would suggest that speeches should be limited so as to give each a chance. She made some of the men furious by ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... you." The Old Man raised his hand to adjust the ancient style hearing aid he affected as Ben sank into a chair. "Sorry Ben. I just had old Brannic Z-IX in here. A fine old robot, yes, but like most of that model, long-winded. So—" He ...
— The Real Hard Sell • William W Stuart
... long-winded, Luby," remarked a tall man who smoked a pipe, "an' likewise yore angry passions has run away with yore sense. Yuh can't string a man up because he won't talk; 'cause if yuh do we'll sick the deputy sheriff on yuh an' mebbe you'll go ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... grimly, "the whole thing is, as you term it, odd; and I can see no object in your picking out this particular singularity for long-winded criticism, except to cast scandal upon my household, by leaving a hideous and vague imputation floating among the members of it. Sir, sir, this is a foul way," he cried, sternly, "to ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the Bithynians, replied to me at great length, but he made very few points. Like most of the Greeks, he mistakes volubility for fulness of treatment, and they pour forth in a single breath a perfect torrent of long-winded and frigid periods. Julius Candidus rather wittily says apropos of this that eloquence is one thing and loquacity another. For there have been only one or two people who can be described as eloquent—not one indeed if ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... by accident, and will explain the incident to you. You must forgive me if I am lengthy; but I can only write in my own way, dear Trix, and perhaps that will be a little long-winded. ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... "Don't be so long-winded in your reports as you have been in the past," said the manager of the "Wild West" railway to his overseer. "Just report the condition of the track as ye find it, and don't put in a lot of needless words that ain't to the point. ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... want to see my bird," cried Oliver, who was amused by the sailor's long-winded narrative. "If it takes so much time to shoot one bird, how long would it take ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... my own interests," said Captain Cronin, lighting a cigar. "Long-winded old boy, for his age. What's ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... huge six-pound piece of pork uplifted on his tormentors, his mate ceased to bale out the pea-soup, and the whole ship seemed paralysed. The boatswain, having checked himself in the middle of his long-winded dinner-tune, drew a fresh inspiration, and dashed off into the opposite sharp, abrupt, cutting sound of the "Pipe belay!" the essence of which peculiar note is that its sounds should be understood and acted on with the utmost degree ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... carried on in epigrammatic phrases. I need not waste words by making the long-winded inquiry, 'Do you love me?' It is sufficient to ask simply, 'Me quieres?' And when Cachita tells me, in reply, that her love for me may be compared to her fondness for her mother's precious bones ('Te quiero mas que a los huesitos de mi mama'), and when, ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... the defence of this indefensible book. These articles have another disadvantage arising from the scurry in which they were written; they are too long-winded and elaborate. One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time. If I have to start for High-gate this day week, I may perhaps go the shortest way. If I have to start this minute, I shall almost certainly go the longest. In these essays (as I read them ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... and call on every heroic soul to take sides with God against sin within himself and the evil and misery all around him. There is an almost infinite amount of strength, endurance, and heroism in this "slow-witted but long-winded" human race waiting to leap up at the appeal to fight once more and win a victory after repeated defeats before the sun goes down. Appeal to this and point to the great "captain of our salvation made perfect through sufferings," and every man that is of the truth ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... half-a-dozen of flies (we are enabled, for the benefit of those who admire the antiquities of the gentle art of angling, to state that they were brown hackles) by the time that Sir Piercie had arrived at the conclusion of his long-winded strophes of the divine Astrophel. So that he also testified a magnanimous contempt of that which to-morrow ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott |
