"Prosy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... passed by, bringing to Guy Landers a new Heaven and a new earth. Already the prosy old university town had begun to assume an atmosphere of home. The well-clipped campus, with its huge oaks and its limestone walks, had taken on the familiar possessive plural "our campus," and the solitary red squirrel which sported fearlessly ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... great personal interest in New France even to the neglect at times of things which his courtiers deemed to be far more important. The governor and the intendant plied him with their requests, with their grievances, and too often with their prosy tales of petty squabbling. With every ship they sent to Versailles their memoires, often of intolerable length; and the patient monarch read them all. Marginal notes, made with his own hand, are still upon many of them, ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... that snuffy, tiresome, prosy professor? How can you talk such nonsense? I am sure the author must be young; there is so much freshness ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Answer) your unknown Adorer." The custom of inserting letters in the course of the story was, as has already been indicated, a heritage from the times of Gomberville, La Calprenede, and the Scuderys when miscellaneous material of all sorts from poetry to prosy conversations was habitually used to diversify the narrative. Mrs. Haywood, however, employed the letter not to ornament but to intensify. Her billets-doux like the lyrics in a play represent moments of supreme emotion. In seeking vividness she too ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... have been a time when mountain-scenery, instead of being sought, was shunned,—when princes possessing the most beautiful lands among the Rhine hills should, with great trouble and expense, have transported their seats to some flat, uninviting locality,—when, for instance, the dull, flat, prosy, wearisome gardens of Schwetzingen should have been deemed more beautiful than the immediate environs of Heidelberg. Yet such were the sentiments that prevailed in Switzerland until a comparatively late date. It is only since the days of Scheuchzer that Swiss scenery has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... old Pot is getting rather prosy, Carrie. So when he had finished that long speech, during which I was looking at the lovely fashion plates in Harper, ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... half a mile in a direct line from the birch-tree, and presented an imposing appearance; but on drawing near, the odd architectural discrepancies became noticeable. Side by side with the prosy Americanism of the northern wing, sprang gracefully the Moorish columns of the portico; beyond, uprose in massive granite, quaintly inscribed and carved, and strengthened by heavy pilasters, the ponderous Egyptian ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... I have been prosy and practical enough and now have used my allotted time and space. It may not be wholly out of place to further tax your time and patience, and ask you to lift your eyes from taking a critical view of defective drains, muddy ditches, and unattractive ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... appeared to have an endless repertoire of them always ready, like the successive charges in a magazine gun, and always pertinently adapted to some passing event. It was refreshing to us correspondents, compelled as we were to listen to so much that was prosy and tedious, to hear this bright specimen of Western genius tell his inimitable stories, especially his reminiscences of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... rung Archie fell from. When he entered a stuffy room he would poke his staff through the window to let in fresh air, and then fling down a shilling to pay for the breakage. He was deaf in the right ear, and therefore usually took the left side of prosy people, thus, as he explained, making a blessing of an affliction. "A pity I don't hear better?" I have heard him say. "Not at all. If my misfortune, as you call it, were to be removed, you can't conceive how I should miss my deaf ear." He was a fine fellow, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... regular stint of eight vinegar-barrels, with the privilege of doing one or two more, if he could, for pay. He ate some breakfast with Lurton. For freedom is a great tonic, and satisfied hopes help digestion. It is a little prosy to say so, but Lurton's buttered toast and coffee was more palatable than the prison fare. And Lurton's face was more cheerful than the dark visage of Ball, the burglar, which always confronted Charlton at ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... at first so bothersome that Gard contemplated leaving the neighborhood. Even the Buchers, truest of prosy Germans, could grasp the ridiculousness of this situation, and it was the one item of noisy fun they could fall back upon when they wished ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... bluestocking. Fatal Friendship enjoyed a success which Catharine Trotter was not to taste again, and of all her plays it is the only one which has ever been reprinted. It is very long and extremely sentimental, and written in rather prosy blank verse. Contemporaries said that it placed Miss Trotter in the forefront of British drama, in company with Congreve and Granville "the polite," who had written a She-Gallants, which was everything that Miss Trotter did not wish ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... world is not so prosy, The woods with mirth o'erflow, To me life seems all rosy, ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... the journal must treat of subjects in the most popular manner, avoiding, as far as is consistent with the dignity of the object in view, very elaborate and prosy disquisitions. I shall endeavor to get a circular out next week. Meantime accept my thanks for the interest you take in the subject, and be assured that if I succeed in starting the journal, I shall, at all times, be grateful ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... his despondency, while Mr. Surplice, who was getting a little prosy as a preacher, was as full of fire as in his younger days. Mr. Capias was so eloquent that the people stamped till the house fairly shook with applause. He ended with resolutions, pledging the support ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... speak, drew up all his facts and figures in the form of a hollow square, Tyson charged with magnificent contempt of danger. No doubt Tyson's method was extremely amusing and effective, and his sparkling periods proved the enemy's dullness up to the hilt; unfortunately, the prosy but responsible representations of Smedley ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... and setting out with long strides, came in sight of Raikes, who walked in gloom, and was evidently labouring under one of his mountains of melancholy. He affected to be quite out of the world; but finding that Evan took the hint in his usual prosy manner, was reduced to call after him, and finally ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with rhythmic regularity, and though it is possible that many Englishmen would have regarded Garside Scar as a very second-rate country house, and would have seen in Major Radcliffe and his wife nothing more than a somewhat prosy old soldier and a withered lady old-fashioned in her dress and views, this Westerner had what was, perhaps, a clearer vision. Wyllard could imagine the Major standing fast at any cost upon some minute point of honor, and it seemed to him that Mrs. Radcliffe, with all the ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... a single electric discharge, so to speak. Yet every word and all that partook of the nature of communication by intelligible sounds seemed to be colourless, cold, and dead. Then you try and try again, and stutter and stammer, whilst your friends' prosy questions strike like icy winds upon your heart's hot fire until they extinguish it. But if, like a bold painter, you had first sketched in a few audacious strokes the outline of the picture you had in your soul, you would then easily have been able to deepen and ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... he came in so apropos that I am morally certain he gets a hint from somebody who watches the course of the conversation, and means through him to have a hand in it and stop any of us when we are getting prosy. But in consequence of That Boy's indiscretion, we were without a check upon our expansiveness, and ran on in the way you have observed and may be ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... list of events, as prosy and commonplace as a private's or a carpenter's or a sutler's diary. However, there is more sense in this poor man's performance; he flies his true colours from the first; he has cleared the ground for some educated person ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... knowing why. She generally looked forward with pleasure to meeting the Ambroses, but this evening she had been rather disappointed. The conversation had dragged, and the excellent Mrs. Ambrose had been more than usually prosy. Nellie had complained of a headache and leaned wearily against ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... are—that somebody has asked them out, or they have toothache and so wouldn't appreciate even the society of jolly seraphims. Christmas, except to the young, is essentially a festival of "let's pretend"—let's pretend that we love everybody, that everybody loves us, that Aunt Maria isn't a prosy old bore, that Uncle John isn't a profiteer; that everybody has his or her good points and that all their bad ones are not sticking out, as they usually appear to us to be, as painfully apparent as those ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... to study a Sunday-school lesson, and the experience was so entirely new to him, that he became more deeply interested than the little learner herself. He went to church on Sunday, and was probably the most attentive listener the rather prosy ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... pleading the book does not lack ingenuity, and as an example of the familiar belief that other peoples will shut their eyes and swallow whatever opinions the Teuton thinks good to offer them, it may have interest for the psychologist. For the rest it is a very prosy piece of literature, only saved occasionally in its dulness by the unconscious crudity of the hatreds lurking beneath its mask of plausibility. One of these hatreds is clearly directed against Ambassador GERARD, to whose well-known book this volume is in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... "You know the forests and rivers and mountains of Germany are full of all sorts of strange sprites, and you know the people believe in them, and that is one of the things which make life in the Old World so fascinating. But here we are too prosy and practical and business-like, and we don't believe in anything except what we can touch with our hands, and see with our ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... you will let me have the hundred and thirty for—" And then Mr. Sowerby took his leave, having certainly made himself master of the occasion. If a man of fifty have his wits about him, and be not too prosy, he can generally make himself master of the occasion, when his companions are under thirty. Robarts did not stay at the Albany long after him, but took his leave, having received some assurances of Lord Lufton's regret for what had passed ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... married in the dress she happened to have on when she ran away,—just an old black walking skirt and plaid shirt-waist. No veil, no trail, and no orange-blossoms, and she had counted on having all three. It was so prosy and commonplace after the grand things she ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... that if the technical expression is correct and intelligible the artist has already told us what he wishes to convey in the most perfect language of which that idea is susceptible, and that any attempt to put it into the lower and more prosy language of the critic would only weaken and ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... him acquainted with the family of scarlet fish, and some handsome gold-fish. Two of the gold-fish, called respectively Gay and Gilt, were particularly friendly to Sammy, who soon found them much more entertaining than the worthy, but somewhat prosy Pilot. ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... attack us. If we need an army at all, we should need one ten times the size, but we don't. Nature has seen to that. Yet tonight, when I was particularly anxious to get on with some important domestic legislation, we had to sit and listen to hours of prosy military talk, the possibilities of this and that. They don't realise, these brain-fogged ex-military men, that we are living in days of common sense. Before many years have passed, war will belong to ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... surface of the glassy stream were visible undulations of heat, and the light steam of evaporation lay along the sluggish water and hung like a veil between the eye and the bank. Seated in an armchair and overcome by the heat and the droning of some prosy passengers near by, I fell asleep. When I awoke the guards were crowded with passengers in a high state of excitement, pointing and craning shoreward. Looking in the same direction I saw, through ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... the dress, I could write a seven volume treatise on that. It sounds prosy, I know, and very stupid, but let me tell you that it is the wise girl who buys for comfort, utility and wear, instead of style and elaborateness. A plain little fedora, if well brushed, makes a trimmer, neater ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... Oceanville What he is after no one knows. Some say he is going to Greece, others whisper an invasion of Paraguay, and others, of course, say other things; perhaps equally correct. I think he is for Greece. I know he is one of the most extraordinary men I ever met with. I am getting prosy. Good-bye! Write soon. Any fun going on? How is Cynthia? I ought to have written. How is Mrs. Felix Lorraine? She is a deuced ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... reasonable man his life. I believe this to be the case almost throughout the country, but each has a special attraction, and none can be richer than the one I am speaking of and going to introduce you to very particularly, for on this subject I must be prosy; so those that don't care for England in detail may skip ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... Virginian who has written some interesting stories, and who steadily improves upon himself.... This is a thoughtful, semi-philosophical story. There is much discussion in it, but none of it is prosy."—New York Herald. ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... ordinary-looking man, more elderly in appearance than his years warranted. He was bald and clean-shaved but for scraps of side-whiskers that gave him a resemblance to the traditional stage-lawyer of amateur theatricals, a likeness increased by his heavy and prosy manner. It was hard to believe that he had ever been a young subaltern, though such had once been the case, for the Indian Political Department is recruited chiefly from officers of the Indian Army. But he was never the gay and light-hearted individual that most ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... innumerable inquiries about his health, "I have a streak of old age. Pity, when we have grown old, we could not turn round and grow young again, and die of cutting our teeth." A few months later, when he had begun to be troubled with difficulty of breathing, he had a long and prosy letter from a total stranger, who proposed a call. "Oh, if he could only give me his long wind," gasped Irving, "he ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... interest and attention is one which should be specially cultivated. Even if the talker is prosy and prolix, the well-bred person will appear interested, and at appropriate intervals make such remarks as shall show that he has heard and understood all that has been said. Some superficial people are apt to style this hypocrisy; but if it is, it is certainly a commendable hypocrisy, directly ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... likely to please a young friend and attract him from places of idle amusement; and I knew that a well-timed evening-call at his bachelor home meant a dozen or two of oysters, a glass of old brown sherry, a fragrant cigar and an hour's chat which was often instructive and never prosy. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... of college, with all sorts of fine theories, just bubbling over with enthusiasm, much the same as you are now, fresh from Normal, but somehow they have mostly flattened out, and now I find myself settling down to the prosy life of a country doctor, who feeds his own horses and blackens his own boots, and discusses politics with the retired farmers who gather in the hardware store. I catch myself at it quite often. Old Bob Johnson and I are ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... personally acquainted with the spots dealt with or with spots like them the fault, in some degree at least, must rest upon the fact that I have had my main dependence in the preserved letters of one who was by no means a sprightly correspondent, but on the contrary was by way of being somewhat prosy, not to say commonplace, ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... behind the scenes Paul found the schoolroom more than ever repulsive; the bare floors and naked walls; the prosy men who never wore frock coats, or violets in their buttonholes; the women with their dull gowns, shrill voices, and pitiful seriousness about prepositions that govern the dative. He could not bear to have ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... Morris Stories" is to sow the seed of pure, noble, manly character in the mind of our great nation's childhood. They exhibit the virtues and vices of childhood, not in prosy, unreadable precepts, but in a series of characters which move before the imagination, as living ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott
... the longest number on the programme. I would dearly love the next number, also, but I must not make the evening too dull and prosy for you. Will you trust me to select your partner for the ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... of the youngest and most daring of the girls, and galloped clumsily around like a sportive and giddy elephant set free for the first time in its native jungle, and finding it very much to its liking. His daughter Maria, faithfully at her mother's side, sat with one ear grudgingly lent to the prosy heaviness of Mr. Webb's light talk, and her whole face turned longingly toward the spot where the happy sinners were gyrating, and, seeing her father there, her round eyes grew rounder than ever, as she watched in breathless alarm lest the earth should open under ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... book on his desk, tightened his belt, buttoned his coat and took up the prosy records of Caesar. Pebble Stone showed him the place. He straightened up and, glancing at the first ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... wasn't, but I speedily declared that I was not when I saw that his daughter was bent upon hearing the story. So he started upon a prosy description as to how the fresh air had sent him to sleep, not saying a word about the port, and I ceased to listen to him, preferring to devote the whole of my attention to his daughter, who had seated herself upon a footstool ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... horror to current prices. You have but to walk aside, however, into the Palazzo Pubblico really to feel yourself a thrifty old medievalist. The state affairs of the Republic were formerly transacted here, but it now gives shelter to modern law-courts and other prosy business. I was marched through a number of vaulted halls and chambers, which, in the intervals of the administrative sessions held in them, are peopled only by the great mouldering archaic frescoes—anything but inanimate these even in their present ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... primal civilizer,—the very keystone and foundation of all progress. From the plain, prosy, earthy fact that man is a hungry animal, and must eat, has sprung all the civilization of the world! I shall demonstrate this in my book, beginning with the scriptural legend of Adam's greed for an apple. Adam was evidently hungry at the moment Eve tempted ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... mule," said the homoeopathist, reluctantly putting up his sovereigns. "Will you work at something practical and prosy, and let the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... journalism of America. Both Raymond, of the Times, and Bennett, of the Herald, almost live in the editorial function; and the former of these, though now Speaker of the Assembly, will either pen his leaders in his desk, during the utterance of prosy speeches, or in hours stolen from sleep after adjournment. In addition to these, we might quote the caustic language of Mr. Greeley, in reference to some mechanics who had 'struck,' in order to reduce their day's labor (we think to nine hours). 'He was ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the young beaux and court-gentlemen of the time of James I. His peculiar trick of the redundant syllable at the end of many of his lines is largely responsible in producing this effect of ordinary speech, that yet is verse without being prosy. There is a flavor about Fletcher's work peculiarly its own. He created a new form of mixed comedy and dramatic romance, dealing with the humors and mischances of men, yet possessing a romantic coloring. He had great skill in combining his effects, and threw a fresh charm and vividness ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... "What you wish, so long as it is not conventional and hackneyed. But I know you will not be prosy, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to be foolish. I thought of all this as I drove back to Blois by the way of the Chateau de Cheverny. The road took us out of the park of Chambord, but through a region of flat woodland, where the trees were not mighty, and again into the prosy plain of the Sologne—a thankless soil to sow, I believe, but lately much amended by the magic of cheerful French industry and thrift. The light had already begun to fade, and my drive reminded me of a passage in some rural novel of Madame ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Lizzie Dangler's prosy platitudes, which some deemed wit—Horner, par exemple—sank into nothingness, and Baby Blake, one of the "gushing" order of girlhood, appeared as a stick, or, rather, a too pliant sapling—her inane "yes's" and lisping "no's" having an opportunity of being "weighed in the balance," ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... I'm prosy. I won't say much more, for I see you take out your watch as though you wished I'd stop, that you might go; so I'll close with 'finally,' as I ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... an advantage over the dead. To find the moral of 'Coningsby' may be impracticable and is at any rate irrelevant. The way to enjoy it is to look at the world through the eyes of Sidonia. The world—at least the Gentile world—is a farce. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred are fools. Some are prosy and reasoning fools, and make excellent butts for stinging sarcasms; others are flighty and imaginative fools, and can best be ridiculed by burlesquing their folly. As for the hundredth man—the youthful Coningsby or Tancred—his enthusiasm is refreshing, and his talent undeniable; let us ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... American, so surprisingly ignorant of the Bible, is that the authorized English version is a great work of literary art, and the continental versions are comparatively artless. To read a dull book; to listen to a tedious play or prosy sermon or lecture; to stare at uninteresting pictures or ugly buildings: nothing, short of disease, is more dreadful than this. The violence done to our souls by it leaves injuries and produces subtle maladies which have never been properly studied by psycho-pathologists. ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... privat docentes, or official lecturers, mostly young savants, who have not the rank or title of professor, but have obtained only the venia legendi from the university. The lectures, as a rule of admirable learning and thoroughness, invariably laying great and prosy stress on "development," are delivered in large halls and may be subscribed for in as many faculties as the student chooses, the cost being about thirty shillings or there-abouts per term for each lecture "heard." Outside the university the student enjoys complete independence, which is a privilege ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... mentally noted, for introduction at a more favourable time. It will mean that the teacher will respect the continuity of thought and interest as completely as she would wish an audience to respect her occasional prosy periods if she were reading a report. She will remember, of course, that she is not training actors for amateur theatricals, however tempting her show-material may be; she is simply letting the children play with expression, just ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... all the fun down there,' called out Sir Asher benevolently; and the bluff Briton—even to the northerly burr—was so vividly stamped upon Barstein's mind that he wondered the more that the Mayoress could see him as anything but the prosy, provincial, whilom Member of Parliament he so transparently was. 'A mere literary illusion,' he thought. 'She has read the Bible, and now reads Sir Asher into it. As well see a Saxon pirate or a Norman jongleur in a ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... loveliness in his mind, ... and to live, so that he might deserve to follow and find her when his work on earth was done. Moreover, Heaven to him was no longer a vague, mythical realm, ill-defined by the prosy descriptions of church-preachers,—it was an actual WORLD to which HE was linked,—in which HE had possessions, of which HE was a native, and for the perpetuation and enlargement of whose ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... 'You horrid old prosy thing of four U's,' said Geraldine. 'You are sitting up there, you great fair creature, you, for the poor child to worship and adore, and not ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have the King killed, since Ferdinand would then succeed to the throne of Naples? Did Ariel's intervention kill the plot? What light is thrown on the characters by scene i. of this act? Do you think it is intended to be shown that Gonzalo is prosy and tiresome, although good, or only that the lower and more frivolous characters find him so? Which is the likelier, that Shakespeare intended the dialogue about Gonzalo's ideal commonwealth to be a satire upon it, or favorable to Utopian schemes? Which comes out the better ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... each month, due to ill health, began prowling about Steve's office at unexpected hours, cornering him for prosy talks and conferences, under which Steve writhed in helpless surrender. Since he realized the true meaning of his marriage he began placing the blame on the culprit—Beatrice's father. As he did so ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... bishop or two, a score of deluded, but well-meaning gentlemen, who obstinately adhere to the unfashionable notion, that, where great political powers are enjoyed, there are certain serious duties to the public closely connected therewith, a few prosy and pompous peers who believe that their constant presence is essential to the welfare and prosperity of the kingdom,—such, I think, is a correct classification of the ordinary attendance of noblemen at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Overdene. He had often inflicted wearisome conversations upon her; and when he called, intending to put the momentous question, Jane, who was sitting at her writing-table in the Overdene drawing-room, did not see any occasion to move from it. If the rector became too prosy, she could surreptitiously finish a few notes. He sank into a deep arm-chair close to the writing-table, crossed his somewhat bandy legs one over the other, made the tips of his fingers meet with unctuous accuracy, and intoned the opening sentences of his proposition. ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... small excursions were apt to take a man into leafy dells where there were ferns and flowers too shy to fringe the dusty plodding thoroughfare. Dick liked that figure. It revealed to him a certain lightness of heart and poetry in himself that distinguished him from the prosy grubbers. This sprinkling of life with episodes was like a little tonic. It kept ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... they met at the post office on week evenings, occasionally they saw each other for a moment after church on Sunday mornings. Mrs. Fletcher Fosdick could not imagine why her only child cared to attend that stuffy little country church and hear that prosy Kendall minister drone on and on. "I hope, my dear, that I am as punctilious in my religious duties as the average woman, but one Kendall sermon was sufficient for me, thank you. What you see in THAT church to please you, ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... October when there are winds across the earth and gorgeous panic of fallen leaves—are you of that elect who, on such occasion or any occasion else, feel stirrings in you to be quit of whatever prosy work is yours, to throw down your book or ledger, or your measuring tape—if such device marks your service—and to ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... family of them," he repeated inwardly. A drawback indeed. Why could an interesting young organism so seldom be detached from its milieu and enjoyed in isolation? Prosy parents; tiresome, detrimental brothers ... He wondered if she had any idea what they were all like. It might be just as well, however, not ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... Englishman; "my coming here was not a matter of choice: it was necessity. Come, I will make a confidant of you and relate my history. Don't be alarmed, I won't keep you up all night with prosy details. My life, as you may see, has not yet been a long one, and until this year it ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... absolutely hungers for some grand, ecclesiastical building, some glorious vestige of early ages; so when we have once grown familiar with mediaeval towns and outlines, it becomes an absolute necessity occasionally to run away from our prosy nineteenth century habitations, and refresh our spirit, and absorb into our inmost nature all these refining old-world charms. It is an influence more easily felt than described; also, it does not ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... they should find me out! But what can be done? In brief, I cannot get a brief, and thus I exercise my professional acquirements how I can, proving myself as long-winded, as prosy perhaps, and certainly as lying, as the more fortunate of ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... humiliation and of his forlorn and pathetic death not less than the roistering frolics and jocund mendacity of his life and character—is essential to a right appreciation of the meaning of him. Shakespeare is never a prosy moralist, but he constantly teaches you, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, that the moral law of the universe, working continually for goodness and not for evil, operates in an inexorable manner. Yet it is ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... all this Thomasin was not sorry that she had started. To her there were not, as to Eustacia, demons in the air, and malice in every bush and bough. The drops which lashed her face were not scorpions, but prosy rain; Egdon in the mass was no monster whatever, but impersonal open ground. Her fears of the place were rational, her dislikes of its worst moods reasonable. At this time it was in her view a windy, wet place, in which a person might experience much discomfort, lose ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... to exchange the 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, ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... mine reminds me of a prosy preacher who chose one Sunday as the text of his sermon, "It is good to be here," and began his discourse with the announcement, "I shall employ all the time this morning in telling of the places in which it is not good to be. If you come to hear me to-night I will tell you ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... appears to better advantage in a neat, cosy little library, with a bright fire burning in the grate, than in a cheerless, dim and prosy den, called by way of courtesy, an "office," we thus look in upon the young man of books and letters. Phillip Lawson has just returned from a meeting in connexion with his church, and judging from his haggard looks, has had a busy day. ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... evening, however, that the Peacock presented attractions which enabled the two friends to resist even the invitations of the gifted, though prosy, Pott. It was in the evening that the 'commercial room' was filled with a social circle, whose characters and manners it was the delight of Mr. Tupman to observe; whose sayings and doings it was the habit of Mr. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... and apprehension of causal sequence, without admixture of animistic belief and without a sense of dependence on any preternatural intervention in the course of events. Not much is to be said for the beauty, moral excellence, or general worthiness and reputability of such a prosy human nature as these traits imply; and there is little ground of enthusiasm for the manner of collective life that would result from the prevalence of these traits in unmitigated dominance. But that is beside the point. The successful ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... discompose the singer, and he stops at each tap to inquire angrily what it is that is not right; he shortly resolves, however, to pay no heed to the spiteful enemy, but cover over the interruptions with his voice. Louder and louder and ever more breathlessly he sings, a lyric that is more prosy than prose, a piece of common statement of facts, tortured into verse, which attains metre only by throwing the accent continually, ludicrously, on the wrong syllables. The melody, nasal and snuffling, is the very prose, ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... said Harry again, "I wonder is HE pinned somewhere? I feel like giving him a lift; he is so prosy it isn't likely anyone else will feel moved ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... one to understand what is evidently the normal state of many thousands of hard-worked, ill-fed, and irregularly-sleeped labourers; the men who, sitting down thus weary at night, we expect to read some prosy book full of desperately good advice, of which one half the words are not needed for the sense and the other half are not understood by the ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... them of '93, and recollections that were almost personal gave life to the prosy descriptions of the author. At that time the high-roads were covered with soldiers singing the "Marseillaise." At the thresholds of doors women sat sewing canvas to make tents. Sometimes came a wave ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... to-morrow they would be wan. There! I have thrown them out wide into that gulf of a street twelve stories below. They will flutter down in the smoky darkness, and fall, like a message from the land of the lotus-eaters, upon a prosy wayfarer. And safe in my heart there lives that gracious picture of my lady as she stands above me and gives them to me. That is eternal: you and the pinks are ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... very deeply with a young gentleman whose recollections run chiefly upon the exact numbers of shillings and pence captured by himself and his pocket-picking 'pals'? Similarly Robinson Crusoe dwells but little upon the horrors of his position, and when he does is apt to get extremely prosy. We fancy that he could never have been in want of a solid sermon on Sunday, however much he may have missed the church-going bell. But in 'Robinson Crusoe,' as in the 'History of the Plague,' the story speaks for itself. To ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... a jewel in my fingers And went to sleep. The day was warm, and winds were prosy; I ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... concluded, Acme rose; and observing a countryman with his arm bound up, enquired if he had met with an accident; and patiently listened to the prosy narrative of age. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... to be any one that is not read or recited; impromptu keeps its original sense, denoting something that springs from the instant; the impromptu utterance is generally brief, direct, and vigorous; the extemporaneous speech may chance to be prosy. Offhand is still more emphatic as to the readiness and freedom of the utterance. Unpremeditated is graver and more formal, denoting absolute want of preparation, but is rather too heavy a word to be applied to such apt, ready utterance as is ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... contents in front of this little foreword, I am quite sure that few will pause to consider my prosy effort. Nor can I blame any readers who jump over my head, when they may sit beside kind old Baucis, and drink out of her miraculous milk-pitcher, and hear noble Philemon talk; or join hands with Pandora and Epimetheus in their play before the fatal box was opened; or, in fact, be in the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... Fenley and his wife, or uninteresting people of the type which the village barber had etched so clearly for Trenholme's benefit. Whatsoever quickening of romance might have crept into such lives had long yielded to atrophy. Marriage, to the girl's imaginative mind, was synonymous with a dull and prosy middle age. Most certainly the vague day-dreams evoked by her reading of books and converted into alluring vistas by an ever-widening horizon were not sated by the prospect of becoming the wife of either of the only two young men ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... installed. I am really a Methodist yet, and Methodists are expected to shout and be enthusiastic. When we move into our manse, and the honeymoon is ended, I'll just say, 'I am very fond of you, Mr. Duke.'" The voice lengthened into prim and prosy solemnity. ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... prosy, weak-minded creature, who, although time was so precious, would have stood talking to me of its great value by the hour, if I had patience to listen. I thanked him for his offer, but assured him I would pay his usual price for the work. Mrs. Blake, however, ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... somewhat limited space of a chapter to give the full attention that should be given to such a brilliant and original essayist (which is not always an ipso facto of brilliant essayists) as Chesterton. Essayists are of all men extremely elastic. Occasionally they are dull and prosy, very often they are obscure, quite often they are wearisome. The only criticism which applies adversely to Chesterton as an essayist is that he is very often—and I rather fear he likes being so—obscure. He is brilliant in an original ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... teacher, teacher," uttered louder and louder, and repeated six or seven times, is also familiar to most ears; but its wild, ringing, rapturous burst of song in the air high above the tree-tops is not so well known. From a very prosy, tiresome, unmelodious singer, it is suddenly transformed for a brief moment into a lyric poet of great power. It is a great surprise. The bird undergoes a complete transformation. Ordinarily it is a very quiet, demure sort of bird. It walks about over the leaves, ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... making her mistress think her neglectful, and she would humbly beg to ask me whether I would advise her to write her explanations and excuses to Miss Halcombe, requesting to receive the messages by letter, if it was not too late. I make no apologies for this extremely prosy paragraph. I have been ordered to write it. There are people, unaccountable as it may appear, who actually take more interest in what my niece's maid said to me on this occasion than in what I said to my niece's maid. ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... nothing else to do. 'Let us look in upon Aldus,' they say to each other. Then they loaf in and sit and chatter to no purpose. Even these people with no business are not so bad as those who have a poem to offer or something in prose (usually very prosy indeed) which they wish to see printed with the name of Aldus. These interruptions are now becoming too serious for me, and I must take steps to lessen them. Many letters I simply leave unanswered, while to others I send very brief replies; and as I ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... and Phyllis looked at John. If there is ever love at first sight! Perhaps it never happens in this prosy old twentieth century. But, if it ever ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... then to one clear point. From these justly famous works a selection should be made. Their length should be avoided, their prosy passages eliminated; the one picture, or perhaps the many pictures, which each master has painted better than any rival before or since, that and that alone ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... witchcraft, without any poetry in it, without any thing to amuse the imagination, or interest the fancy, but hard, prosy, and accompanied with all that is wretched, pitiful and withering, perhaps the well known story of the New England witchcraft surpasses every thing else upon record. The New Englanders were at this time, towards the close of the seventeenth century, ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... will do. Above all things, Master Frank, avoid being prosy; it is the worst fault an author ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... the man in bed. Had he done this artistic bit of acting for the purpose of spending his Christmas on the flat of his back talking to a prosy old doctor? He lay still, trying to think what answer could be made to this physician who told him seriously that he had appendicitis. He ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... give such perfect little dinner-parties as Aunt Marjorie. She had a knack of finding out each of her guests' particular weaknesses with regard to the dinner-table. She was no diplomatist, and her conversation was considered prosy; but with Mr. Merton to act the perfect host and to lead the conversation into the newest intellectual channels, with Hilda to look sweet and gracious and beautiful, and with Aunt Marjorie to provide the dinner, ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... even better than Drusilla had hoped. Under Miss Lee's very evident admiration, the Reverend Algernon seemed to grow at least three inches in height, and his rather prosy compliments did not fall upon too critical nor blase' ears. Sarah blushed and fluttered and stammered as would any young girl with her first sweetheart. She even grew pretty; took to arranging her hair in a more becoming style and was particular about her dress. One morning she came ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... All prosy dull society sinners, Who chatter and bleat and bore, Are sent to hear sermons From mystical Germans Who preach from ten to four, The amateur tenor, whose vocal villanies All desire to shirk, Shall, ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... fellows who will use them no better than I, and becoming a slave myself; which, if you please, you shall not catch me doing in a hurry. No, my beloved, I must keep my foot on their necks for your sake as well as for my own. But you do not care about all this prosy stuff. I am consumed with remorse for having bored my darling. You want to know why I am living here like a hermit in a vulgar two-roomed hovel instead of tasting the delights of London society with my beautiful ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... I am too easy-going." He had never cared to talk about himself, and now he said, "Well, yes, I go along in my old prosy way. It is just like the old schooldays, with half the difficulties gone. Of course the children are not always good, but that makes it the more amusing; and one can see much more easily what they are thinking of and ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... first an excellent reason for not finding Captain Gething, but the idea had hardly occurred to him before he dismissed it as unworthy, and manfully resolved to do his best. For an hour he sat listening to the somewhat prosy talk of the old lady, and then—there being no sign of Annis's return—he silently departed and made his way ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... in no hurry, then,' said Steerforth, 'come home with me to Highgate, and stay a day or two. You will be pleased with my mother—she is a little vain and prosy about me, but that you can forgive her—and she will be pleased ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... him,—you see the author in his look,— His forehead lined with wrinkles like a book,— Wrote the great history of the ancient Huns,— Holds back to fire among the heavy guns. Oh, there's our poet seated at his side, Beloved of ladies, soft, cerulean-eyed. Poets are prosy in their common talk, As the fast trotters, for the most part, walk. And there's our well-dressed gentleman, who sits, By right divine, no doubt, among the wits, Who airs his tailor's patterns when he walks, The man that often speaks, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... equal. He had a democratic philosophy which is sometimes that of Mr. Micawber, "Celui-la est riche qui recoit plus qu'il ne consume; celui-la est pauvre dont la depense excede la recette," But he is seldom so prosy as this. Let us think of him as one who wished to turn his talent as a painter of still life to the benefit of his nation, and who succeeded in a degree far beyond ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... as I say, filled me with sorrow. I hate military belongings, and am disgusted at seeing the great affairs of a nation put out of their regular course. Congress to me is respectable. Parliamentary debates—be they ever so prosy, as with us, or even so rowdy, as sometimes they have been with our cousins across the water—engage my sympathies. I bow inwardly before a Speaker's chair, and look upon the elected representatives of any nation as the choice men of the age. Those ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... neither are they, like some clever folks, pertinaciously silent when we most wish them to shine. Did Shakespeare ever refuse his best thoughts to us, or Montaigne decline to be companionable? Did you ever find Moliere dull? or Lamb prosy? or Scott unentertaining?" ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... he has been completely successful. There is no weekly paper published in this or the Old World that so covers the field for the youthful mind as GOLDEN DAYS. There is nothing heavy about it—nothing prosy or difficult to comprehend in the matter it contains. Its stories are graphic, entertaining and by the best writers, while each number has articles especially prepared on subjects of practical interest to boys and girls by authors whose fame in the arena of ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... them at least had revolvers, since Hervey was an ill man to tackle; but probably Date, who was too dense to consider consequences, was unarmed. Neither did Don Pedro think it necessary to tell the officer that he and his two companions were prepared to shoot if necessary. Inspector Date, being a prosy Englishman, would not have understood such lawless doings in ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... rather apt to think that a poetry book is but dull reading, and they much prefer plain prose. It may amuse those who feel like that to remember that hundreds of years ago it was just the other way round. Then it was prose that was considered dull—hence we have the word prosy. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... with a pious, prosy, perfect creature eternally haunting the house and exhorting me on the error of my ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... down and cry for the water of Helicon to turn the wheels of his little private mill at the Bankside. He appears to have gone more quietly about his business than any other playwright in London, to have drawn off what water-power he needed from the great prosy current of affairs that flows alike for all and in spite of all, to have ground for the public what grist they wanted, coarse or fine, and it seems a mere piece of luck that the smooth stream of his activity reflected ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... truth than Hapley. But Hapley was skilful with his rhetoric, had a turn for ridicule rare in a scientific man, was endowed with vast energy, and had a fine sense of injury in the matter of the extinguished species; while Pawkins was a man of dull presence, prosy of speech, in shape not unlike a water-barrel, over-conscientious with testimonials, and suspected of jobbing museum appointments. So the young men gathered round Hapley and applauded him. It was a long struggle, vicious ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... it yet," said Rap; "I think 'The Talker' would be a fine name for him." "So it would—and more polite than 'The Preacher,' as some call him who think he is a trifle too prosy in his remarks. One of his brothers, whose eyes are white instead of red, and who lives in the bushes instead of high woods, is called 'The Politician' from his fondness for newspapers—not that he can read them, of course, but he likes to paper his nest with clippings ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... accoutrements for that noble little army, (standing army we call it!) on which the State prides itself not a little, and spends no end of money. For ourselves, (if the reader but permit us,) we have long admired this little Spartan force, saying all the good things of it our prosy brain could invent, and in the kindest manner recommending its uniform good character as a model for our very respectable society to fashion after. Indeed, we have, in the very best nature of a modern historian, endeavored to enlighten the barbarian ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... indulged in these reflections, with manifest risk of being thought somewhat prosy by my more lively readers, in order to guard my countrymen, English, Scotch, and Irish, against a kind of presumption which is exceedingly common among them when they come to Canada—of fancying that they are as capable of forming correct opinions ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... among them a tract that looked interesting. I knew that it would have a story at the commencement and a moral at the close; but I promised myself that I would enjoy the story and leave the rest. It would be easy to put away the tract as soon as it should seem prosy.' He scampers off to the stable-loft, throws himself on the hay, and plunges into the book. He is captivated by the narrative, and finds it impossible to drop the book when the story comes to an end. He reads on and on. He is rewarded by one great golden word whose significance he has never before ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... very funny now. Then William Wallace in 'Scottish Chiefs.' Bless me! we cried over him as much as you do over your 'Heir of Clifton,' or whatever the boy's name is. You wouldn't get through it, I fancy; and as for poor, dear, prosy Richardson, his letter-writing heroines would bore you to death. Just imagine a lover saying to a friend, 'I begged my angel to stay and sip one dish of tea. She sipped one ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... of his life had old Isaac Mole led a wandering career, that he found it exceedingly difficult, not to say irksome, to settle down to the prosy existence which they ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... keep alive the natural wickedness in man, to set snares and evil mischances before the feet of simpler folk, to teach youth to be idle and young men to be quarrelsome, to lure rogues to their ruin; but, above all, to import wit into prosy dialogues, merriment into dull situations. Such is 'the Vice'. ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... tried in fair, square prose, with sentences solidly built, and no help from bastard rhythms. Moreover, there is a progression—I cannot call it a progress—in his work towards a more and more strictly prosaic level, until at last he sinks into the bathos of the prosy. Emerson mentions having once remarked to Thoreau: "Who would not like to write something which all can read, like 'Robinson Crusoe'? and who does not see with regret that his page is not solid with a right materialistic treatment which delights everybody?" I must say in passing, that it is not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but before you get to the corner of the street you wish you hadn't come out and you turn back. You open a book and try to read, but you find Shakespeare trite and commonplace, Dickens is dull and prosy, Thackeray a bore, and Carlyle too sentimental. You throw the book aside and call the author names. Then you "shoo" the cat out of the room and kick the door to after her. You think you will write your letters, but after sticking at "Dearest Auntie: I find I have five minutes to spare, and so ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... thus sketched is one of which the writer is not aware, that it has been distinctly defined, as a field for thought and investigation. He has little to learn from the successes or the failures of predecessors. Be this his excuse for seeming prosy and dull; possibly for mistakes and crudities. He has the doubly difficulty of attempting to turn thought into trains to which it is not accustomed; and yet of offering no results so profound as to have escaped other observers; or so sublime as to be the due prize of genius, ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... yet doubly masculine. She had walked down the steps that led from the piazza betwixt Rich Hilary and Jack Adair, the catches of the season, in full view of the Hammond girl, who was left to waste her sweetness upon prosy old ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... into the hands of Nicholas Stone, the sculptor, who made a reproduction of it in white marble, with the little urn concealing the feet. This was placed in St. Paul's Cathedral, of which King was chief residentiary, and may still be seen in the present Cathedral King's elegy is very prosy in starting, but improves as it goes along, and is most ingenious throughout. These are the words in which he refers to the appearance of the dying ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... depreciation of the rival fabrics is exquisite; and Dryden, the most English of our poets, would not be so thoroughly English if he had not in him some fibre of la nation boutiquiere. Let us now see how he succeeds in attempting to infuse science (the most obstinately prosy material) with poetry. Speaking of "a more exact knowledge of the longitudes," as he explains in a note, he tells ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... was asked to invite him to attend an evening meeting of a scientific club, which was to be held at the house of a distinguished member. I was very reluctant to ask him to be present, for I knew he could be easily bored, and I was fearful that a prosy essay or geological speech might ensue, and I knew he would be exasperated with me, even although I were the innocent cause of his affliction. My worst fears were realized. We had hardly got seated, before a dull, bilious-looking ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... doctor, our age is too prosy for that sort of thing. We have neither wit enough, nor poetry enough, to furnish the disputants. I can conceive a state of society in which such tensons would form a pleasant winter evening amusement: but that state of ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... of prosy men and women! when tender Loveliness goes airing herself through shady lanes, frank young Valor is seldom far off. The Eurydice may be only a school-girl, and Orpheus a brave, manly boy in a blue coat; but ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... Peter, or a Peter with many sides. He changes colours like a chameleon, and his coat like a snake. He is a Proteus of a Peter. He was at first sublime, pathetic, impressive, profound; then dull; then prosy and dull; and now dull—oh so very dull! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... get to know them all off by heart. The books always say such a lot between the happening parts, and if you skip too much you lose part of the story. The story people all sit down and fold their hands, and wait till the close thick pages of prosy prosy are over, and when they get up again and go on they have forgotten their parts. Pappy says I shall like reading when I'm older; but I'm not older, and I don't like it. I just like to be doing something, and oh, dear, there is ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... himself to a long, tedious hour. The room was hot and airless, the lawyer very prosy and unnecessarily fluent; but he seemed a straightforward, honest man, and gave them good counsel. Malcolm was soon put into possession of all the Strickland bequest, and after this ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... blame? Art, I hold, is nowadays purely a commercial affair. Burlington House is simply a huge shop, and it is all nonsense to talk for one instant about the encouragement it gives to art, or to take seriously the prosy platitudes which are poured forth year by year at that picture tradesmen's dinner—the Royal Academy Banquet. Women are not invited—women, forsooth, whose works on the walls have done their share towards bringing the shillings to the turnstiles of the Academy. But more ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... read the news in his morning paper. It was his custom to seize the journals the moment they arrived, and read to Dora at the breakfast-table all war news of vital interest—and a good deal more that was prosy, and only interesting to a soldier. By chance, he saw the story of Dick's death before his daughter came upon the scene, and was discreet enough not to mention the matter. Since Dora's refusal of Ormsby, he was fairly certain as to the nature of his daughter's feelings ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... hated ponderous, prosy, pedantic tomes. Garrick had an extensive collection on the history of the stage, but Shakespeare was his only constant friend. Gibbon was a book-collector more in the sense of a man who collects books as literary tools ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... beautiful name evocative and symbolic of its ideal aspect, "the breast of the nymph in the brake." And the disease is not extinct in these modern days, nor will it ever be so long as men shall yearn for the unattainable; and the prosy bachelors who trail their ill-fated lives from their chambers to their clubs know of, and they call their malady—the ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... Xanthippe pined for the amusements and seductive gayeties of social life, but she got none. The only society she knew was the prosy men-folk whom Socrates used to fetch home with him occasionally. Xanthippe grew to hate them, and we don't blame her. Just imagine that dirty old Diogenes lolling around on the furniture, and expressing his preference for a tub; picking his ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... immemorial.... Amory wasn't good enough for Clara, Clara of ripply golden hair, but then no man was. Her goodness was above the prosy morals of the husband-seeker, apart from the ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... every respect, such an inferior creature to the Indian—he was so vulgar, so ugly, so cringing, and so prosy—that he is quite unworthy of being reported, at any length, in these pages. The substance of what he had to tell me may ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... to read the little book in an utterly unconcerned state of mind, believing indeed at the time that if there were any salvation it was not for me, and with a distinct intention to put away the tract as soon as it should seem prosy. I may say that it was not uncommon in those days to call conversion "becoming serious"; and judging by the faces of some of its professors, it appeared to be a very serious matter indeed. Would it not be well if ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor
... learned a lesson in poetry-making," said Aunt Louise, "which was worth lying awake to hear. Don't you suppose, Maria, that even prosy people, like you and me, might jingle poetry till in time it would become as easy ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... of you," growled Reade, in a tone of disgust. "You're getting as prosy as that Congressman—-and that's the most insulting thing I can think of to ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock |
