"Parenthetically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time is. I have no sense of time whatever myself, so that to me it may seem either long or short—according to what I may be doing. I have always envied people who possessed this sense of absolute certainty in guessing the time—it is not a common gift. I make this remark "parenthetically" in my desire for trying to elucidate the causes which lie at the back ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... Mr. Vholes parenthetically, "I believe I have already mentioned. If Mr. C. is to continue to play for this considerable stake, sir, he must have funds. Understand me! There are funds in hand at present. I ask for nothing; there are funds in hand. But for the onward ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... it a good many times if our acquaintance continues." Then more gravely, but quite parenthetically, he added: "If a firm puts up money for a business, they want to know all about it, of course. I tell them. I've just been doing a report this afternoon, a wonder; it's what made me late. Shall I ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... properly, he would send me about my business. Mrs. Erme's death brought Corvick straight home, and within the month he was united "very quietly"—as quietly I suppose as he meant in his article to bring out his trouvaille—to the young lady he had loved and quitted. I use this last term, I may parenthetically say, because I subsequently grew sure that at the time he went to India, at the time of his great news from Bombay, there was no engagement whatever. There was none at the moment she affirmed the opposite. ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... place, isn't it?" he remarked parenthetically. "Great Scott! but I'll bet we have fun these two days! And if my sister Betty is here—" ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... was ignored; the artist dashed on into a presto movement, in which, as far as any direct theme was discernible, Dr. Mangan, his cupidity, his riches, the riches of Dr. Aherne's parents were the leading motives. Also, parenthetically, that Danny Aherne was without shoe or stocking to his foot when he was going to school in Pribawn with her own poor little boy. "And look at him now!" continued Mrs. Twomey, on a high reciting note, and still presto, "with his ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... only quite lately (for you must know that during the whole month of July, of glorious memory, I have barely condescended to go down once or twice to Geneva; I was living in a little bit of a house on the mountain, whence, let me say parenthetically, it would have been quite easy for me to hurl sermons and letters at you); Mademoiselle Merienne (what shall I say to you after such an enormous parenthesis?), somewhat like (by way of a new parenthesis) those declaimed discourses of Plantade or Lhuillier, which ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... Scribe remarks, parenthetically, that there is nothing that shows a woman's refinement more clearly than the way ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... muscularizing his nature to that character of self-reliance which shows itself so constantly and sharply during his after-life. His tutor was Brunetto Latini, a very superior man (for that age), says Aretino parenthetically. Like Alexander Gill, he is now remembered only as the schoolmaster of a great poet, and that he did his duty well may be inferred from Dante's speaking of him gratefully as one who by times "taught him how man eternizes himself." This, and what Villani says of his refining the Tuscan idiom (for ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... all; and no aunt that ever lived could be kinder to me than aunt Dorothy. I am always so happy here," she said; "and it seems such a treat to get away from the Lawn—of course I am sorry to leave mamma, you know," she added, parenthetically—"and the stiff breakfasts, and Mr. Sheldon's newspapers that crackle, crackle, crackle so shockingly all breakfast-time; and the stiff dinners, with a prim parlor-maid staring at one all the time, and bringing one vegetables that one doesn't want if one only ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Parenthetically, let me remark that whenever a man thinks that he has outgrown the woman who is his mate, he will do well carefully to consider whether his growth has not been downward instead of upward, whether the facts are not merely that he has fallen away ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... me any questions. Ask anybody else but me. I'm always very ignorant in the police court—never know anything, except my answers to the surety examination. Those I always learn by heart. Now—" he turned to the guard, and said parenthetically, "All right, my boy," whereupon the guard disappeared. "Now, just take my arm, if you please; you needn't be afraid, ha! ha! I'm old, and wont hurt you. You see, we must be friends, old friends. Bless you, my child, I've ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... unable to continue its labours until it secured a new meeting-place. In the meanwhile, its Committee of Elders had determined to enter en masse the Committee for Salvation.... This, I may remark parenthetically, is the last time history mentions the ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... the rascal is alive—an elderly scoundrel he must be by this time; and a hoary old hypocrite, to whom an old schoolfellow presents his kindest regards—parenthetically remarking what a dreadful place that private school was; cold, chilblains, bad dinners, not enough victuals, and caning awful!—Are you alive still, I say, you nameless villain, who escaped discovery on that day of ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... father, Johnny was skilful in them all and could catch Bobby with them twice as often as Bobby could catch him. This kept Bobby humble-minded, and, as it in no way discouraged him from keeping at it, was a good thing for him. Here is perhaps as good a place as any to remark parenthetically that while the friends scuffled and wrestled constantly, Johnny never got to be much better than he became in the first three weeks, while Bobby, in later years, was the middle-weight champion ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... find also that a crystal is always finished and has its form as perfectly developed when it is the minutest point discernible by the microscope as when it has attained its ultimate growth. I might add parenthetically that crystals are sometimes of immense size, one at Milan of quartz being 3 feet 3 inches long and 5 feet 6 inches in circumference, and is estimated to weigh over 800 pounds; and a gigantic beryl at Grafton, N. H., is over 4 feet in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... tale his only comment was to say: "I've been readin'—I'm a great reader," he threw in parenthetically, "wonderful exercise for the mind, and learns you things which you wouldn't be likely to 'ear tell of—but I've been readin' about a king—I'll show you 'is nyme in the book—what fell in love with ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... by a pair of barber's tongs—not dirty and woolly and full of suggestions as, of course, he —the great Waller, alone of all living animal-painters —depicted it. All of which, to Waller's credit, it must be parenthetically stated, these same "idiots" learned to recognize in after years as true, when that distinguished animal-painter took a medal at the Salon for the same picture which the Jury of N. A.'s had rejected at ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... result of the experiment, I looked up to the clock and found it to be just three minutes past one! Little as the mind had really accomplished, the sense of its activity in these few minutes had been tremendous. Measuring time by the conscious succession of ideas may, if I may say it parenthetically, be no more than the same infirmity of our limited human faculties which just now is leading so many men of science, consciously or unconsciously, to recognize in Nature co-ordinate gods, self-subsisting and independent of the ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... Johnson, not that the man of the world should give to his youthful son, living at a corrupt Continental court, counsel as to relations which were regarded as inevitable in such a circle; but that the heart of the father should not have poured (were it but parenthetically) through the pen of the worldling some single sentence like this: "Writing to you, my son, as an experienced man of the world to one inexperienced, I recommend the good taste in such matters and the delicacy which become a gentleman; but to his dear boy, your father says, avoid, if possible, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... Mrs. Pendomer lamented, parenthetically, "never suspects a woman of discretion, until she begins to ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... maintained by Outtime Import & Export Trading Corporation—a zerfa plantation just east of the High Ridge country. There she assumed an identity as the daughter of a planter, and took the name of Dallona of Hadron. Parenthetically, all Akor-Neb family-names are prepositional; family-names were originally place names. I believe that ancient Akor-Neb marital relations were too complicated to permit exact establishment of paternity. And all Akor-Neb men's ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... of the winter. Of course they would have preferred to hire a house, but the "hole," if one could believe it, didn't offer one; so they had simply shut themselves off as best they could from the "hotel crew"—had her friend, Miss Wincher parenthetically asked, happened to notice the Sunday young men? They were queerer even than the "belles" they came for—and had escaped the promiscuity of the dinner-hour by turning one of their rooms into a dining-room, ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... determination of this government not to abandon its claims nor those of its citizens was stated parenthetically, and in such a subordinate way as not necessarily to attract the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... listening ear and may a blessing fall on your confession." Then fashioning a trumpet with his two hands he bellowed like a fog horn: "Becky! A drop of whiskey hot for the gent." And while the refreshment was being procured he observed parenthetically: "A nice little piece, ain't she? Very smart and dossy. Come on, Smith, my boy—my jolly old beau—dear old cracker, soak up the juice of the barley and ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... from bough to bough, monstrous reptiles slip silently through the undergrowth; insects buzz in swarms above the putrid swamps; occasionally the jungle crashes beneath the tread of some heavy animal—a rhinoceros, perhaps, or a wild bull, or an orang-utan. (I might mention, parenthetically, that orang-utan means, in the Malay language, "man of the forest," while orang-outang, the name which we incorrectly apply to the great red-haired anthropoid, means "man in debt.") The Bornean jungle is a place of indescribable dismalness ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... " a pause, " ... hasn't got either of the two houses on Mansion Avenue now ... sold them and divided the money among her children ... gave us some ... and Millie ... and Lan ... wouldn't hear of 'no' ... " parenthetically, "Uncle Joe didn't need any; he's always prospered since the ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... the suggestion that a sentence, or a part of a sentence, or a group of sentences, it may be, be dropped into an undertone, or said as an aside, or rapidly passed over, or in some way put in the background—said, so to speak, parenthetically. Other portions of the speech, or the sentence, the important ones, should, on the same principle, be made to ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... face as he added, parenthetically, "Good-bye to Warrington's love letters that they took ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... Dick, in a low and confidential tone, "you are aware that my errand to town is accomplished. I have smashed Lawyer Coates's screen, pocketed the dimmock—here 'tis," continued he, parenthetically, slapping his pockets,—"and done t'other trick in prime twig for Tom King. With a cool thousand in hand, I might, if I chose, rest awhile on my oars. But a quiet life don't suit me. I must be moving. So I shall start ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... a while, but Isoult fancied that Lady Lisle was scarcely so angrily earnest in her opposition to the doctrines of the Gospel as was generally her wont. Presently up came the untidy Deb, in all her untidiness, to say that dinner was served; and was parenthetically told by Philippa that she was a ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... number of them in Warsaw—who had resorted to this well-known trick to rob the public during the panic. But right there, among the crowd which was assembled in front of the church, gazing in horror at the bodies of the victims, some unknown persons spread the rumor—which, it may be parenthetically remarked, proved subsequently unfounded—that two Jewish pickpockets had ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... down anywhere you like; and just holler through the crack in the floor, under the bearskins there, if you want anything out of the Bocker-shop, below."—("He means Tobacco when he says Bocker," interposed Zack, parenthetically.) "Can you set your teeth in a baked tater or two?" continued Mat, tapping a small Dutch oven before the fire with his toasting-fork. "We've got you a lot of fizzin' hot liver and bacon to ease down the taters with what you call a relish. Nice and streaky, ain't it?" Here the ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... the best; slapped in the face by an irritable plaintiff; held down by main force when he wanted to leave; inviting to supper those whom he had killed before breakfast; answering the mournful salute of the gladiators with a grotesque Avete vos—"Be it well too with you," a response, parenthetically, which the gladiators construed as a pardon and refused to fight; dowering the alphabet with three new letters which lasted no longer than he did; asserting that he would give centennial games as often as he saw fit; an emperor whom no one ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... certain point, in logic. The concepts of the intellect have no existence outside it. 'The mind has the gift, by an act of creation, of bringing before it abstractions and generalisations which have no counterpart, no existence, out of it.'[88] Parenthetically, we may remark that passages like this show how wide of the truth Mr. Barry is when he speaks of Newman as a 'thorough Alexandrine.' To deny the existence of universals, to regard them as mere creations of the mind, is rank blasphemy to a Platonist; and the Alexandrines ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... child had of associating with words it had heard other notions than those common with us; but he ascribes too much to the child's inventive genius. The child guesses more than it discovers, and the very cases adduced (hamm, tem), on which he lays great weight, may be traced, as I remarked above parenthetically, to something heard by the child; this fact he seems to have himself quite overlooked. It is true, that in the acquirement of speech one word may have several different meanings in succession, as is especially the case with the word bebe (corresponding to the English word baby), almost ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... which it does compound you may often wonder what these qualities are. She had not at any rate been successful: her lover was dead, her husband was liked and her children were pitied, for in payment for a topic London will parenthetically pity. It was thought interesting and magnanimous that Charles Tramore had not married again. The disadvantage to his children of the miserable story was thus left uncorrected, and this, rather oddly, was counted as HIS sacrifice. His mother, ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... kept near the lion den; and when the row broke out and the roughs from the town began to fight our razorbacks—them's our pole- and canvas-men," explained Mr. Sorber, parenthetically, "I popped me right into the ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... me say parenthetically that I think our foreign trips will have a far greater vraisemblance if we heighten the illusion with a few photographs, don't you? They cost about a quarter apiece ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... Mariana in his "History of Spain," how the army of the Spanish kings got out of a sad hobble among the mountains at the Pass of Losa by the help of a shepherd who showed them the way. "But," saith Mariana, parenthetically, "some do say the shepherd was an angel; for after he had shown the way, he was never seen more." That is, the angelic nature of the guide was proved by being only once seen, and after having got the army out of the hobble, leaving it to fight or run away, as it had most mind to. Now, I look ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... specimen I select a little bit of mixed prose and verse from the Carmina Burana, which is curious from its allusion to the Land of Cockaigne. Goliardic literature, it may be parenthetically observed, has some strong pieces of prose comedy and satire. Of these, the Mass of Topers and Mass of Gamesters, the Gospel according to Marks, and the description of a fat monk's daily life deserve ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... dwell in Tottenham, and of whom little was known, save that he was understood to have fought at the battle of Langside, and served with great bravery, under Essex, both in Spain and in Ireland, in the times of good Queen Bess—such times as England would never see again, the old farmer parenthetically remarked, with a shake of the head. Master Hugh Calveley, he went on to say, was a strict Puritan, austere in his life, and morose in manner; an open railer against the licence of the times, and the profligacy of the court minions,—in ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... and would have us feel, the impression of calm consciousness of power and of leisurely dignity produced by Christ's having time to pause even on such an errand, in order to heal by the way, as if parenthetically, this other poor sufferer. The child's father with impatient earnestness pleads the urgency of her case—'She lieth at the point of death'; and to him and to the group of disciples, it must have seemed that there was no time to be lost. But He who ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... eleven. His name alone is significant enough. As far as I am concerned, you are well aware that I can fight also. I fought at Lens, at Bleneau, at the Dunes in front of the artillery, a hundred paces in front of the line, while you—I say this parenthetically—were a hundred paces behind it. True it is, that on that occasion there was far too great a concourse of persons present for your courage to be observed, and on that account perhaps you did not reveal it; while here, it would be a display, and would excite remark—you wish that others ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... on it, instead of those three days. A conciseness to be matched in English by nobody except Pope, who can say a plagiarizing enemy "steals much, spends little, and has nothing left," a conciseness which Pope toiled and sweated for, came as easy as wit to Voltaire. He can afford to be witty, parenthetically, by the way, prodigally, without saving, because he knows there is more wit where ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... out, parenthetically at least, that James Watt had not only had to solve the problem as best he could, but that he had no inkling, so far as experience was concerned, that a solvable ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... his position by deserting to another camp. Accordingly he offered his services to Jacopo Caldora, one of Joan's generals, and received from him a commission of twenty men-at-arms. It may here be parenthetically said that the rank and pay of an Italian captain varied with the number of the men he brought into the field. His title 'Condottiere' was derived from the circumstance that he was said to have received a Condotta di venti cavalli, and so forth. Each cavallo was equal to one mounted ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... have a limb broken at the time," Alfred was observing, parenthetically, in his soft ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... marble facades crowned with Corinthian pilasters, and the sides are of red or yellow brick, on which is probably some huge, ugly advertisement announcing that some fine five-cent cigar is "generously good," or holding out hope of relief in the shape of a pill to liver-troubled humanity. Parenthetically, I may remark that this city is, if anything, rather worse than London in the way of placards that scar the face of it. The goblin-like advertisements that spit soap and other things at unoffending eyes at night in Trafalgar Square are bad ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... Council, in order that his Majesty might decide according to his pleasure; and [it was declared that] in the interim the cabildo should govern the archdiocese. [82] And here it occurs to me to remark, parenthetically, that, although the secrets and the justifiable motives of the Audiencia are inscrutable, we may regard it as probable that their principal reason for this action was their knowledge of the fact that this bishop, a few days after arriving in this city, had preached in the convent of Santo Domingo, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... interest and distinction; she was pointed out to visitors; the owner was proud of her accomplishment, he was naturally likely to preserve her life, and especially if she could lay. A hen that can lay and crow is a 'rara avis'. And it should be parenthetically said here that the hen who can crow and cannot lay is not a good example for woman. The crowing hen was of more value than the silent hen, provided she crowed with discretion; and she was likely ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... certainly would have already won a decent place in poetry had it been christened more gracefully and not nicknamed off to live in backyards with cab and bus. The whole subject of new terms is too vast to be parenthetically handled, and I hope that some one will deal with it competently in an early publication of the S.P.E. The question must here remain to be determined by the evidence of the words in the table of obsoletes, which I think is convincing; my overruling contention being that, however ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... worn long his beard, that the Queen hath daily made him great instance, and desired him to put it off for her sake."[380] Henry's inconstancy in the matter of his beard not only caused diplomatic inconvenience, but, it may be parenthetically remarked, adds to the difficulty of dating his portraits. Francis, however, considered the Queen's interference a sufficient excuse, or was not inclined to stick at such trifles; and on 10th January, 1520, he nominated Wolsey his proctor to make ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... parenthetically, not be out of place, that this characterisation of the ulterior springs of action as essentially not of the nature of creature comforts, need be taken in no wider extension than that which so is specifically given it. It will be found to apply as touches ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... the delusion of persecution. L. was a bright boy, always conceited and given to non-social acts. Thus he never would play with the other boys unless he were given the leading role, and he could not bear to hear others praised or to praise them! Parenthetically the role that jealousy plays in the conduct of men and women needs exposition, and I recommend that some Ph. D. merit his degree by a thesis on this subject. When he was a little older he got the notion that hats were bad for the hair, and being proud ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... of the Essay on Man, it may be parenthetically noticed, was its effect upon Voltaire. In 1751 Voltaire wrote a poem on Natural Law, which is a comparatively feeble application of Pope's principles. It is addressed to Frederick instead of Bolingbroke, and contains a warm eulogy of Pope's philosophy. But a few years ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... his double-faced Pall Mall polite manner, that young Arthur had no fortune at all, that the Major had asked him (Costigan) to go to the lawyers ("wherein he knew the scoundthrels have a bill of mine, and I can't meet them," the Captain parenthetically remarked), and see the lad's father's will and finally, that an infernal swindle had been practised upon him by the pair, and that he was resolved either on a marriage, or on the blood of both ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... reference to Mrs. Raddle's "confounded little bill," when—in between Ben Allen's inquiry, "How long has it been running?" and Bob Sawyer's reply, "Only about a quarter and a month or so"—the Reader parenthetically remarked, with a philosophic air, "A bill, by the way, is the most extraordinary locomotive engine that the genius of man ever produced: it would keep on running during the longest lifetime without ever once stopping of its ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent |
