"Wordy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what's there, But men of genius give what's not. Then come your travellers, false as they,— All Piranesis, in their way; Eking out bits of truth with fallacies, And turning pig-stys into palaces. But, worst of all, that wordy tribe, Who sit down, hang ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... said Sir John sadly, and without replying to the young officer's wordy sally, "won't you ever tell me about this fever which sears you, this sorrow ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... absolute equality many of the learned men of England. We hear of his dining at the house of the Lord Mayor of London, and there meeting Sir Thomas More and crossing swords with that worthy in wordy debate. ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... Red enjoyed any more than a wordy battle. Whenever a boy called him a name Red hurled a worse one back at him. It seemed as if he actually took pride in making blood curdling retorts. Certainly he didn't mean to leave, so long as anybody gave him an excuse ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... ground closely followed from the cab by John Berwick, leaving the two drivers to themselves, and only a few yards apart. These worthies taking no further interest in the performance of their recent fares, engaged in a wordy altercation as to the rival merits of their steeds, and each had a different answer to the problem of "who won the race?" The outcome of this led to blows; as to the result, that belongs to another chronicle than mine. We are at present concerned with the race between Jim and the Mexican, ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... know of only one person who deserves praise for his work in experimental philosophy for he does not care for the discourses of men and their wordy warfare, but quietly and diligently pursues the works of wisdom. Therefore what others grope after blindly, as bats in the evening twilight, this man contemplates in their brilliancy because he is a master ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... and speaking over her shoulder.] 'Tis in the parson's gown as you should be clothed, Master John. Ah, 'tis a wonderful wordy preacher as you would make, to be sure. And 'tis a rare crop as one might raise with the seed as ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... afflicted with the morbid rage of debate, of an ardent mind, prompt imagination, and copious flow of words, who heard with impatience any logic which was not his own, sitting near me on some occasion of a trifling but wordy debate, asked me how I could sit in silence, hearing so much false reasoning, which a word should refute? I observed to him, that to refute indeed was easy, but to silence impossible; that in measures brought forward by myself, I took the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... was recalled to his position by the harsh voice of the clerk of arraigns. His obedience was mechanical, and the clerk droned out the wordy indictment which pronounced Peter Blood a false traitor against the Most Illustrious and Most Excellent Prince, James the Second, by the grace of God, of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland King, his supreme and natural lord. It informed him that, having ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... over with wrath; but deeming prudence the better part of valour, she did not venture upon any wordy contest with Aunt Rachel, but sat down upon the stool by the fire-place, in which a bright fire was blazing. Up the chimney an old smoke-jack was clicking, whirling, and making the most dismal noise imaginable. ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... meretricious ornament. They are chastened by good taste and regulated by gentlemanly cultivation. They are written by a scholar, and not by a scribbler; and while reading their magnificent pages we need have no misgiving that we are admiring the flashy ornaments of wordy or half-educated mediocrity. Far the best of them is also the first, 'Guy Livingstone.' The poorest is 'Sword and Gown;' this has the feeblest plot, in fact a mere apology for a story, and contains more passages which seem unfinished, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... publicly ignored Grundtvig. But privately a few of them expressed their opinion about the work. Thus a Pastor P. Hjort wrote to Bishop Mynster, "Have you read Grundtvig's Songs of the Danish Church? It is a typical Grundtvigian book, wordy, ingenious, mystical, poetical and full of half digested ideas. His language is rich and wonderfully expressive. But he is not ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... Mackenzie's might have been pronounced aristocratic by comparison. To all such vapourings Mr. Mackenzie responded in the Advocate in kind. He had a large vocabulary of Billingsgate at his command, and as his temper became thoroughly aroused he proved that he could fully hold his own in this sort of wordy warfare. He followed the example of his antagonists, invaded the sanctities of private life, and descended to outrageous personalities. The persons thus placed in the journalistic pillory were merely paid back in their own coin, but they had never been ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... face flaming with fury. Hargus stopped beside her, his arm crooked to bring his hand up to his belt, sawing back and forth as if in indecision between drawing his gun and waiting for the wordy preliminaries to pass. Kerr stood embracing the pole in a pose of ridiculous supplication, the bright chain of the new handcuffs ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... in a wisely constituted republic ought not to fulfill any magistracy whatever, the merchants and artisans of all sorts, are in Florence alone capable of taking office, to the exclusion of all others.' Machiavelli, less wordy but far more emphatic than Varchi, says of the same revolution: 'This caused the abandonment by Florence not only of arms, but of all nobility of soul.'[3] The most notable consequence of the mercantile temper of the republics was the ruinous system of mercenary warfare, with all its ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... were lively scenes during the readings. They all wept at the pathetic parts, laughed loudly when amused, and disputed about passages and incidents at the top of their voices. Mrs. Caldwell forgot that Harriet was a servant, Harriet forgot herself, and the children, unaccustomed to wordy warfare, forgot their fear of their mother, and flew at each ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... neighborhood. He spoke almost entirely in superlatives, and, after making due allowance for what Rena perceived to be a temperamental tendency to exaggeration, she concluded that she would find in the school a worthy field of usefulness, and in this polite and good-natured though somewhat wordy man a coadjutor upon whom she could rely in her first efforts; for she was not over-confident of her powers, which seemed to grow less as the way opened ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... to my claim, I found my pegs thrown away and fresh ones surrounding the shaft in place of them. I strongly demurred to this, but without avail, until a party of men who were our camp neighbours came over and took my part. Through them I recovered my claim without more than wordy warfare. After doing well out of the claim I found I could not continue it without a mate. Having to throw the wash-dirt eleven feet, a lot of the pebbles in it would come back on and bruise my ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... surprised to think I got off with m' life, last winter, when I hazed him away from line-camp; I guess I must uh had a close call, all right!" Billy snorted contemptuously and shut the door upon the wordy revelation of the Pilgrim's deep inner nature which had been until that night carefully hidden from ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... not ask you for pious jargon," said Varillo, beginning to lose temper, yet too physically weak to contend with the wordy vagaries of this singular personage who had evidently been told off to attend upon him. "I asked you who is the Head or Ruler of this community? Who gives you the daily rule of ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... of passion were visible in a scene I witnessed in a little street near San Samuele, where I found the neighborhood assembled at doors and windows in honor of a wordy battle between two poor women. One of these had been forced in-doors by her prudent husband, and the other upbraided her across the marital barrier. The assailant was washing, and twenty times she left her tub to revile the besieged, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... also filled with dialogues ethical and theological; and, with the exception of some brilliant and forcible expressions here and there, consists of an exposition of truisms, more cloudy, wordy, and inconceivably prolix, than any ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... facts, believed and doubted all. Lost in thought, a prey to an awful and involuntary incredulity, which was combated by the instincts of his own pure love and his faith in Natalie, he read and re-read that wordy letter, unable to decide the question which it raised either for or against his wife. Love is sometimes as great and true when smothered in words as it is ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... constant offending this Way, has, in a Degree, an Effect upon the Honesty of his Mind who is guilty of it, as common Swearing is a kind of habitual Perjury: It makes the Soul unattentive to what an Oath is, even while it utters it at the Lips. Phocion beholding a wordy Orator while he was making a magnificent Speech to the People full of vain Promises, Methinks, said he, I am now fixing my Eyes upon a Cypress Tree, it has all the Pomp and Beauty imaginable in its Branches, Leaves, and Height, but alas it ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... on indefinitely illustrating the boundaries of interests of various kinds. Some of them centered in the State House; others in the national Capitol; and many a wordy political battle was fought in the little country section over the question as to whether the protective tariff or the Democratic party was responsible for the hard times the farmers and others were suffering. There were ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt
... yesterday; not a bad speech, though wordy and ill-written. There was an oversight in the Address, which was corrected in both Houses by Peel and Lord Harrowby, but not taken as an amendment. Lord Grey begged it might be inserted in Lord Camperdown's address, which ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... very often to the little house. Miss Cornelia was the joy of Anne's and Gilbert's existence. They laughed side-splittingly over her speeches after every visit. When Captain Jim and she happened to visit the little house at the same time there was much sport for the listening. They waged wordy warfare, she attacking, he defending. Anne once reproached the Captain for his baiting ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... commission was changed and new members were substituted for the old.[130] But that was not enough. The British Premier still encountered such opposition among his foreign colleagues that it was only by dint of wordy warfare and stubbornness that he ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... rejected are lifted to pinnacles of glory. Successive waves of aesthetical preference, following one upon the other with curious rapidity, sweep ancient fortresses of fame from their venerable basements, and raise upon the crests of wordy foam some delicate seashell that erewhile lay embedded in oblivious sand. During the last half-century, taste has been more capricious, revolutionary, and apparently anarchical than at any previous epoch. The unity of orthodox opinion has broken up. Critics have sought ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Ned, hotly. "I'd sooner have one of the Pure Merinoes than Griffith. They do fight us out straight and fair, anyway, and don't cant much about knowing that things aren't right, with Elementary Property Bills and 'Wealth and Want' and that sort of wordy tommy-rot. I like to know where to find a man and that trick of Griffith at the maritime strike in Brisbane showed where ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... generation in Great Britain has been singularly unfortunate in the literature of aphorism. One too famous volume of proverbial philosophy had immense vogue, but it is so vapid, so wordy, so futile, as to have a place among the books that dispense with parody. Then, rather earlier in the century, a clergyman, who ruined himself by gambling, ran away from his debts to America, and at ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... wordy debating, Whether my love should be brought to behold me. Sick was I at heart, ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... gold. But the moment of vocation had come, and before he got down from his chair, the world was made new to him by a presentiment of endless processes filling the vast spaces planked out of his sight by that wordy ignorance which he had supposed to be knowledge. From that hour Lydgate felt the growth ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... from the sad-eyed hermit's lonely cell, Not from the conclave where the holy men Glare on each other, as with angry eyes They battle for God's glory and their own, Till, sick of wordy strife, a show of hands Fixes the faith of ages yet unborn, Ah, not from these the listening soul can hear The Father's voice that speaks itself divine! Love must be still our Master; till we learn ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... presentation of the Bible bear witness to the intellectual outburst at the Reformation; things like the Declaration against the Mass bear witness to the great wars of the Puritans; and things like the allegiance of the Bishops bear witness to the wordy and parenthetical political compromises which (to my deep regret) ended ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... on the lookout for the Hargreaves party, and came forward and had a talk with them before they started across the open spot. He had quite recovered from Nelly's attack upon his dignity as a man and a naval officer, and the pair as usual had a wordy spar. Dick was, however, rather serious at the prospect of the danger they were ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... disappointing even than the honest prose of Opitz. The "Shepherds of the Pegnitz" had tried to imitate the brilliant diction of the Italian poets; but the modern Meistersaenger of the old town of Nuernberg had produced nothing but wordy jingle. Hoffmannswaldau and Lohenstein, the chief heroes of the second Silesian school, followed in their track, and did not succeed better. Their compositions are bombastic and full of metaphors. It is a poetry of adjectives, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... however, are not quite so harmonious in their utterance, and when excited upon any subject, would work themselves up into a sort of wordy paroxysm, during which all descriptions of rough-sided sounds were projected from their mouths, with a force and rapidity which ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... ranged against each other as antagonists, they were quiet as statues. There was much said on both sides, reasonings, entreaties, expostulations, and even jocularity passed, between the adverse, but yet quiescent ranks. In this wordy warfare the boys had the best of it, and I'm sure the ushers had no stomach for the fray—if they fought, they must fight, in some measure, with their hands tied; for their own judgment told them that they could not be justified ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Hopalong was taking a desperate chance in working through the cordon of Indians which surrounded them, and that the house was safe when compared to running such a gantlet, offered to go through the danger line with him. For several minutes a wordy war raged and finally Red accepted a compromise; he was to help, but not to work ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... I mingle in the wordy war, Where Knavery takes in vice her sly degrees, As slip, away, not guilty, from the bar, Counsel, or client, as their Honors please. To breathe, in crowded courts, a pois'nous breath— To plead for life—to justify a death— To wrangle, jar, to twist, to twirl, ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... which profess to cover all the ground, are as futile as the ordinary blundering attempts at comfort, which only charm ache with sound and patch grief with proverbs. The sorrow of our hearts is not appreciably lessened by argument. Any kind of philosophy—any wordy explanation of the problem—is at the best poor comfort. It is not the problem which brings the pain in the first instance: it is the pain which brings the problem. The heart's bitterness is not allayed by an exposition of ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... it was imminent Seemed just as certain as the morning's dawn. We were to have a gala day, indeed. There were to be processions and parades; A great oration in a mammoth tent, With dinner following, and toast and speech By all the wordy magnates of the town; A grand balloon ascension afterwards; And, in the evening, fireworks on the hill. I knew that drink would flow from morn till night In a wild maelstrom, circling slow around The village rim, in bright careering waves, But growing turbulent, and changed to ink ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... beleaguerment No health in war? Fool, sing such song to that Dardanian head, 399 And thine own day! cease not to fright all things with mighty dread. Cease not to puff up with thy pride the poor twice-conquered folk, And lay upon the Latin arms the weight of wordy yoke. Yea, sure the chiefs of Myrmidons quake at the Phrygian sword, Tydides and Achilles great, the Larissaean lord; And Aufidus the flood flees back unto the Hadriac sea. But now whereas this guile-smith fains to dread mine ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... transients thoughtfully cautioning me to put my moccasins under my pillow, as these articles were the object of almost universal covetousness during the evening. No sooner am I comfortably settled down, than a wordy warfare breaks out in my immediate vicinity, and an ancient female makes a determined dash at my coverlet, with the object of taking forcible possession; but she is seized and unceremoniously hustled away by the men who assigned me my quarters. It appears that, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... and buckling belt, yet very quiet and orderly. And beside Roger, Ulf the Mighty leaned him upon his axe, and in the ranks despite their bandages stood Orson the Tall and Jenkyn o' the Ford, even yet in wordy disputation. ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... philosophize about Christ, but endeavor to lead you directly to Christ; and thus you will learn by comparison what manner of spirit you are of, and, I trust, become imbued with his Spirit. I shall speak the truth in love, and yet without fear, and with no wordy disguise. Henceforth I do not belong to you but to my Master, and I shall present the Christ who loved all, who died for all, and who said to all, 'Whosoever ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... roughest and rudest style: "What should I know of houses, a poor working man like me!" "Well," said the lady, "I thought you might have known of some to let, and you need not be so saucy and ill-tempered." Williamson roughly rejoined, and the lady replied, and thus they got to a complete wordy contest attracting the attention of the bystanders, who were highly amused to find that Williamson had met his match. The lady's sarcasms and gibes seemed to make Williamson doubly crusty. He at length asked the other lady—who, by the way, was becoming nervous and half-frightened ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... a good deal of anxiety, as you may imagine, the early editions of the afternoon papers. The first article my eye chanced upon was a mere wordy elaboration of the brief and vague announcement Monson had put in the Herald. Later came ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... resolutions, as calculated to do infinite harm, but they were carried by a very large French Canadian majority at the dictation of Mr. Papineau. Whatever may have been its effect for the moment, this wordy effusion has long since been assigned to the limbo where are buried other examples of the demagogism of those ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... head on the square table by the fireplace, was Pedro, the old proprietor. Two villagers sat at another table in the side of the big room playing cards, with wordy arguments ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... forth fitted, as to require but little skill on the part of the practitioner, to insure them against failure in practice. The process being, of course, in this application to the exigencies of practice, necessarily disentangled from those technicalities and relics of the old wordy scholasticism in which he was compelled to incase and seal up his meanings, in his professedly scientific works, and especially in his professedly practical ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... most brilliant writer, though a little inclined, perhaps, to be wordy. I have discovered in some of his later books one hundred and eighteen thousand words no two of which are alike. This shows great fluency and versatility, it is true, but we need something else. The reader waits in vain to be thrilled by the author's wonderful word-painting. There is not a thrill ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... sure. John's forceful assertion that God could raise up, from the stones on the river bank, children to Abraham, meant to those who heard that even the lowest of the human family might be preferred before themselves unless they repented and reformed.[283] Their time of wordy profession had passed; fruits were demanded, not barren though leafy profusion; the ax was ready, aye, at the very root of the tree; and every tree that produced not good fruit was to be hewn down and cast ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... words, names, and titles, and who in consequence question the piety which hesitates to flatter the Divine ear by "vain repetitions" and formal enumeration of sacred attributes, dignities, and offices. Every instinct of his tenderly sensitive nature shrank from the wordy irreverence of noisy profession. His very silence is significant: the husks of emptiness rustle in every wind; the full corn in the ear holds up its golden fruit noiselessly to the Lord of the harvest. John Woolman's faith, like the Apostle's, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... assimilated, so as to form part of the residuary impression of the country, might be carried away out of the system. Hence they put them up with a light heart on the cackling of their coteries, and they and their children had to live, often enough, with some wordy windbag whose cowardice had cost the country untold loss in blood ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... charm gave place now to her masculine grip. She eulogised me in the language of a seasoned reviewer on the staff of a long-established journal—wordy perhaps, but sound. I revered and loved her. I wished I could give her my undivided attention. But, whilst I sat there, teacup, in hand, between her and the Duchess, part of my brain was fearfully concerned with that glimpse I had had of ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... archer's skill, Laughs at her malice, and is Folly still. Yet well the Muse portrays, in fancied scenes, What pride will stoop to, what profession means; How formal fools the farce of state applaud; How caution watches at the lips of fraud; The wordy variance of domestic life; The tyrant husband, the retorting wife; The snares for innocence, the lie of trade, And the smooth tongue's habitual masquerade. With her the Virtues too obtain a place, Each gentle passion, each becoming grace; The social joy ...
— The Library • George Crabbe
... in wordy Italian that the poor, dear, sweet little signorina had fallen asleep in bed and ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... qualifications, or how splendid his talents, they will, by that species of logic for which slanderers are famous, prove him to be a fool. These dissentions do not expire when the candidates are elected. They are carried to the capitol of our common country and blown out in more than wordy war. There, we have reason to fear, the volcano is gathering, and that the day is not distant when it will disembogue in more than the thunders of Etna, wrap our political heavens in a blaze, and melt its ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... spark in their blood struck from a dislike of the tone assumed by Mr. Shalders to sustain his argument; with his "men are mortal," and talk of a true living champion as "no chicken," and the wordy drawl over "justification for calculating the approach of a close to a term of activity"—in the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... simple, with old women's superstitions; in investigating which he preferred perplexing himself to settling its questions with dignity, so that he excited much dissension; which he further encouraged by diffuse wordy explanations: he ruined the establishment of public conveyances by devoting them to the service of crowds of priests, who went to and fro to different synods, as they call the meetings at which they endeavour to settle everything ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... the Reeve; "here sit ye here a-sermonising, venting words a-many what time our vanished Duchess fleeth. Knew I not the contrary I should say thou didst countenance her flight and spent thyself in wordy-wind wherewith ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... women were not very fair, for they toiled like the men, or more. They were thought to be wiser than most men in foreseeing things to come. They were much given to spells, and songs of wizardry, and were very mindful of the old story-lays, wherein they were far more wordy than in their daily speech. Much skill had they in runes, and were exceeding deft in scoring them on treen bowls, and on staves, and door-posts and roof- beams and standing-beds and such like things. Many a day when the snow was drifting over ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... still holding the wordy letter in his hand, and paced the room. Of his own ability to render effective help, were he allowed freedom of action, Iglesias entertained little doubt—always supposing that the situation did not prove even worse than he had ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... with his Sunday-school superintendent. They rejoiced mildly when in their progress through the United States history they came to pages descriptive of Indian wars and the Revolutionary struggle, since they found their lessons then more easily remembered than the wordy disputes and little understood decisions of statesmen. The first skating on the pond was an event which far transcended in importance anything related between the green covers of the old history book, while to Albert Nichol the privilege of strapping skates on the feet of little Helen Kemble, ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... lovely night sky quite sufficient to light our way along the dykes. I could not speak to ——, but continued to cry as we walked silently home; and whatever his cogitations were, they did not take the unusual form with him of wordy demonstration, and so we returned from one of the most striking religious ceremonies at which I ever assisted. Arrived at the door of the house we perceived that we had been followed the whole way by the naked noiseless feet of a ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... principles of civil liberty; and it damaged itself irreparably in the eyes of the country by refusing to condemn "terrorism" while demanding an amnesty for all political offenders. The unique opportunity which the first Duma afforded was frittered away in futile bickerings and wordy attacks upon ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... woman was in some provinces yoked side by side with an ass to the plough or the harrow; and M. Simond protests that it excited no horror to see the driver distributing his lashes impartially between the woman and her brute yoke-fellow. So much for the wordy pomps of French gallantry. In England, we trust, and we believe, that any man, caught in such a situation, and in such an abuse of his power, (supposing the case, otherwise a possible one,) would ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... driving at. Presently, about the end of the second column, I came to the assertion that 'the posthumous poem of "Nourhalma" must be admitted as one of the most glorious productions in the English language.' This woke me up considerably, and I read on, groping my way through all sorts of wordy phrases and used-up arguments, till my mind gradually grasped the fact that the critic of the Parthenon had evidently never heard of Theos Alwyn before, and being astonished, and perhaps perplexed, by the original beauty and glowing style ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... which had been spoken to Henry by Admiral Bell, more than any others, induced him to hasten his departure from Bannerworth Hall; he had walked away when the altercation between Jack Pringle and the admiral began, for he had seen sufficient of those wordy conflicts between those originals to be quite satisfied that neither of them meant what he said of a discouraging character towards the other, and that far from there being any unfriendly feeling contingent upon ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... and take your place among menials? It is enough to make my poor brother rise in his grave, and your poor, dear mother too, to think of a Fenton stooping to such degradation." But I will forbear to transcribe all the wordy avalanche of lady-like invective that was hurled at me, accompanied by much wringing ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... composed of shops, while several persons, having vegetables or grain to sell, were seated upon the ground. The hum of human voices, the grunting of the camels, and the braying of donkeys, kept up an incessant din, and therefore some minutes elapsed before my attention was attracted by a wordy war which took place beneath my window. Hastily arraying myself in my dressing-gown, and looking out, I saw a man and woman engaged in some vehement discussion, but whether caused by a dispute or not, I could not at first decide. They both belonged to the lower class, and ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... down the street, a talk of mere wordy nothings, but of deep and tender looks. In point of words, a make-talk affair; in point of feeling, a vague shadowy suggestion of twenty delicious possibilities; in point of fact a walk without any ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... saved for us another of these sorrow-laden sentences which Mr. Swinburne has amplified in some beautiful but too wordy ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... tale is exceedingly picturesque, as it was written down from the remembrance of eye-witnesses and actors in the discoveries and conquests it records. And though the detail may be wearisome to a modern reader as a wordy and emotional and unscientific history, yet the story told is delightfully fresh and vivid, and it is told with a simple naivete and truth that seems now almost lost in the self-consciousness ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... many of them, the importance of economizing the reader's or hearer's attention, To so present ideas that they may be apprehended with the least possible mental effort, is the desideratum towards which most of the rules above quoted point. When we condemn writing that is wordy, or confused, or intricate—when we praise this style as easy, and blame that as fatiguing, we consciously or unconsciously assume this desideratum as our standard of judgment. Regarding language as an apparatus of ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... lustre, as the Dedication reminds us, since David Balfour, at the end of the last chapter of Kidnapped, was left to kick his heels in the British Linen Company's office. Five years have a knack of making people five years older; and the wordy, politic intrigue of Catriona is at least five years older than the rough-and-tumble intrigue of Kidnapped; of the fashion of the Vicomte de Bragelonne rather than of the Three Musketeers. But this is as it should be; for older and astuter heads are now mixed up in the case, and Preston-grange ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... patiently, content that he should be clumsy, glad that in the distance, under the arcade of the tabernae, she had spied Hortensius Martius watching with wrathful eyes every movement of the praefect. She wondered if the young exquisite had heard the wordy warfare between herself and the proud man who now knelt quite awkwardly at her feet, and she guessed that what Hortensius had seen and heard, that he would retail at full length to his friends in the course of the banquet given by Caius ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... what lies immediately ahead. Between the spreading branches I caught sight of Charmion looking at me with raised, inquiring brows. She had noted my eagerness, and was wondering what point of interest had been discovered between the wordy American and myself. I raised ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... infant—the child he had never seen. He stepped out into the cabin, with its panelled walls of cedar and maple, and with its long table that seated ten, and at which he had eaten by himself through all the weary time. No laughter and clatter and wordy argument of the mess-room had been his. He had eaten silently, almost morosely, his silence emulated by the noiseless Asiatic who had served him. It came to him suddenly, the overwhelming realization of the loneliness ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... the differences as irreconcilable. For the first and most unfamiliar fact the English have to learn in this strange land is that differences can be irreconcilable. And again the chief danger is that they may be persuaded that the wordy compromises of Western politics can reconcile them; that such abysses can be filled up with rubbish, or such chasms bridged with cobwebs. For we have created in England a sort of compromise which may up to a certain point be workable ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... matter. You will see what Schuyler will make of it. His wordy proclamation will have its living sequel now. A young and innocent girl, seeking the protection of our camp, is inhumanly murdered by Indians in our pay. A single tale like this is enough to undo at a blow all that we have accomplished here. With ten thousand wild aggravations, it will be told in ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... at in dealing with other kinds. The advantages of the short sentence are mainly those of clearness, directness, emphasis. Its dangers are monotony, bareness, over-compactness. The advantages of the long—that is, quite long—sentence, are rather difficult to comprehend. A wordy sentence is likely to defeat its own purpose. Instead of guiding it will lose its hearer. Somewhat long sentences—as already said—will serve in general discussions, in rapidly moving descriptive and narrative ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... him, or characterizing what is most peculiar. The same persons who discovered that Lord Brougham was the modern Bacon have also complimented him with the title of the English Demosthenes. Upon this hint, Lord Brougham, in his address to the Glasgow students, has deluged the great Athenian with wordy admiration. There is an obvious prudence in lodging your praise upon an object from which you count upon a rebound to yourself. But here, as everywhere else, you look in vain for any marks or indications of a personal and direct acquaintance ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... guilt beneath a transparent assumption of innocence. The mirza and the mudbake make no false pretence of taking him at his word, but openly accuse him of deceiving them. The khan maintains his innocence with vehement language and takes refuge in counter-accusations. The wordy warfare goes merrily on for some minutes as earnestly as if they were quarrelling over their own honest money instead of over mine. The joint query of "chand pool?" gathers an additional load of irony from the fact that they didn't seem ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the diplomatist, our envoy lost the pompous tone she had first adopted, and a volley of queries and replies was exchanged so rapidly, and with such appalling shrillness, that we onlookers ran a great risk of being either deafened, or driven out of our senses. At the first slackening of the wordy warfare, Dunmore put his ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... pressure of external accident. And yet when Richard's inward weakness appears to seek refuge in his despair, and his exhaustion counterfeits repose, the old habit of kingliness, the effect of flatterers from his infancy, is ever and anon producing in him a sort of wordy courage which only serves to betray more clearly his internal impotence. The second and third scenes of the third act combine and ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... eye for a second and then looked rather sheepish. I had heard of a certain wordy battle between him and a Territorial Sergeant whom he had set out to teach. Marigold encountered a cannonade of blasphemous profanity, new, up-to-date, scientific, against which the time-worn expletives ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... farther into it, than the Road had been beaten before him. No doubt there were Men of as good natural Abilities in the Ages before the Revival of Learning, as there have been since. But they were cramped with the Jargon of a wordy and unintelligible Philosophy, and durst not give themselves the Liberty to think in Religion, without the Boundaries fixed by the Church, for fear of Anathemas, and an Inquisition. Till those Fetters were broken, little Advance was made, for many ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... from an American port, is sent in ballast to a neutral port to load there, afterwards to run the blockade, Coffey proves it to be treason and criminality. The document is clear, logical, precise and not wordy: not in the style of the State Department logomachy. Why, O why cannot such younger men be at the head! Emancipation would have been carried out, slavery destroyed, the Union restored, rebels crushed, and the French murderers ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... he avoids strongly controverted points in history; or, if his course lies over them, he gives a fairly adjusted average of opinion; he is not in mood for trenchant assertions of this or that belief. This same quality, again, makes him shun political life. He has a horror of its wordy wars, its flood of objurgation. Not that he is without opinions, calmly formed, and firmly held; but the entertainment of kindred belief he does not make the measure of his friendships. His character ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... my wordy honour." It was so gravely spoken that, while pledges involving life and death were obviously not new to him, this one was of ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... and the explanation simple. Gabriel was not talking at that moment, it is true, but he was expecting to talk very soon, to talk a great deal. He had just come into possession of an item of news which would furnish his vocal machine gun with ammunition sufficient for wordy volley after volley. Gabriel was joyfully contemplating peppering all Orham with that bit of gossip. No wonder he was happy; no wonder he hurried along the main road like a battery ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to take steps preparatory to war; and the two countries should be persuaded to understand that neither can perish without the life of the other being placed in great danger. The best answer to be made to the wordy attacks of Englishmen is to be found in success. That answer would be complete; and if it cannot be made, what will it signify to us what shall be said of us by foreigners? The bitterest attacks ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... respects, then, is our city worthy of admiration, and in others also; for we study elegance combined with frugality, and cultivate philosophy without effeminacy. Riches we employ at opportunities for action, rather than as a subject of wordy boast. To confess poverty with us brings no disgrace; not to endeavor to escape it by exertion is disgrace indeed. There exists, moreover, in the same persons an attention both to their domestic concerns ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... is the custom for one guide to conduct a party of four or five persons into the cave. I dislike over-officious guides and the hackneyed comparisons and wordy wonder of gabbling tourists in grand and solemn places like this; therefore, in the morning, before starting, I congratulated myself that I should be alone, with the exception of the guide, who fortunately seemed thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the place in which he had spent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... the canoes went backwards and forwards, when, lo! another demand was made, with the usual clamour and fierce wordy dispute; this time for five khete for the man who guided us to the ferry, a shukka of cloth for a babbler, who had attached himself to the old-womanish Jumah, who did nothing but babble and increase the clamor. These demands were ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... for the facts. It is an easy, but not a satisfactory method of criticism to declare what is not to one's liking to be invention and romance, and it has until late years been difficult to combat such an argument. The battle has raged round wordy disputes, the merits of which are governed by the abilities of the respective disputants; that this is no longer possible is due to the fact that there have entered into the fray the methods and results of folklore which prevent the terms invention ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... of old legends, or, to go still further back, she reminds us of the aedes of old Greece. In the early days of a nation there were always men who went to the crowd and charmed them with the stories they told in a wordy way. They scarcely knew whether they invented these stories as they told them, or whether they had heard them somewhere. They could not tell either which was fiction and which reality, for all reality seemed ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... have shuffled off our clothing. Soft, 'Twas but a bluebottle! How sweet it is To lie like this i' the sun, and think of nought Save how sweet 'tis to lie, and think of nought; And that meseems to many wordy sages Were small refreshment in this windy time. How many are there who do cheat themselves, And with themselves the many, that they are The very vaward leaders of the fray, The lictors of the pomp of intellect. Whereas they are the merest driven spray, The running ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... fields of medicine, especially when the conception newly put forth is entirely novel, sensational, revolutionary, contrary to all former beliefs, and based on theories and conclusions which have been for some time and still are a centre of storm, of wordy argumentation, and even of insult and abuse—at any rate ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10 |
