"Nonsense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 roarers as Boanerges ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... 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
... "Nonsense!" cried the marquis, irritably, as soon as the steward had made his confession. "I told you to get thirty girls, and thirty I mean to have. What's the use of shaking your head when all their dresses are ordered? Thirty tunics, thirty wreaths, thirty pairs ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... "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
... "Nonsense, man," said Hartley, quickly. "You seem to suppose that the boy is dead. What reason have you for imagining that there has ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... 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
... "Nonsense!" said mamma. "You don't suppose I'll have a crow about the house, to kill the young chickens ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... 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
... "Nonsense!" said his wife, bridling. "Do you mean to tell me you've got to ask Bill Foley 'ow you're to dress? He'll soon get tired of it; and, besides, it's just as well to let him see who you are. There's not many tradesmen as would lower themselves ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... 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
... "Nonsense!" said I aloud and peevishly; and I thrust the letter into my pocket, cheek by jowl with the Cardinal's Necklace. And being thus vividly reminded of the presence of that undesired treasure, I became clearly resolved ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... 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
... nonsense, my turtle-doves," interposed Barbesieur. "I bring you tidings which henceforth render such discussions superfluous. Listen to me, both of you. My father has sent me a bit of news which, coming direct from the Marquis do Villars—that is, from Munich—is positive ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... "Nonsense. Stanton's a fool. Nothing would please them better. I've convinced him of that. A wrangle in the courts now over such an issue would postpone its settlement indefinitely. The Supreme Court of the United States has sustained the South on every issue that has been raised. ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... 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
... nonsense!" the woman cried, upsetting the spotless linen angrily. "Tell me where I am and what game you play here! I will go myself and soon be quit of this wonderful Farm of yours and this ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... 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
... "Nonsense," she rejoined. "If you have a slight past, that only makes you the more atmospheric. Be sure you come again soon, and put in a little more ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... 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
... "Nonsense!" ejaculated the proud father. "Rob's storage batteries are not powerful enough to electrocute one or set the house on fire. Do give the ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... 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
... "Nonsense," she declared, sharply, glaring at her duenna. "Cannot you see this young man is telling the truth? I," she declared proudly, "can tell a truthful person from a liar at once. And I declare to you ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... "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
... "Nonsense! Now you sit down and commend your soul to Providence and the kitchen stove. I'll bustle round and get supper." Gilbert pulled out his pipe, and with a sense of elation prepared to enjoy an unusual evening. He was a young man of agreeable parts, amiable and sensitive. ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... 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
... "Nonsense! put it down. You are chilled enough without drinking that to throw you into an ague. Drink something, warm and strong, boy! drink something warm and strong. I tell you, I, for one, cannot get through this day without some such support ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... 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
... "Nonsense! Self-suggestion! It is impossible! Hallucination!" The thought flashed through her tortured brain. She forced herself to be ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... 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
... "Stuff and nonsense!" echoed the doctor. "How you women can work yourselves into a riot over nothing. Now you know he didn't say any more than he has a dozen times before. In fact, he was rather mild on that point, I thought; and I concluded he considered ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... 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
... "Nonsense!" said Nicholas, preparing to resume his walk, then turning back again, "It can't be,"—but adding on second thoughts—"Surely it must be the same man. There can't be ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... 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 |
