"Drivel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said Senesin, his voice oddly tight under the strain of suppressed emotion, "a person should learn to know what he's talking about before he makes any attempt to talk. If you must talk drivel about my father, I'll thank you not to do it in my presence." And before Heywood could formulate an answer, Senesin turned to the colonel. "If you'll pardon me, my lord, I have another errand to perform. I'll see you at eleven." Then ...
— The Unnecessary Man • Gordon Randall Garrett
... meant to marry when she should find the right man, but the difficulty of choice disturbed her. She had still much of the spirit which made her at twelve see nothing but nonsense in the "Turn, Gentle Hermit of the Dale" drivel, and she was quite prepared to decide with her mind. She never took her heart into consideration, or the possibility of being overcome by a feeling which ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... squeak boldly forth in print that Nature is the mother of altruism, that self-sacrifice is her first law! One genius observes that 'tis their cruelty and selfishness have arrested the progress of the tiger and the ape! Poor Nature! Never a word of shotguns in all this drivel, of course. Cruelty and selfishness! Qualities purely and solely human—qualities resulting from conscious intelligence alone. You and I are selfish, not the ape; you and I are cruel, not the tiger. ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... was not out of it, each time people are manifestly interested—politely, of course—and form a circle, make room for one as they did at that particularly disagreeable Grimshott garden party yesterday, each time—I don't want to drivel, but so it is—one sees a pair of lovers—oh! well, it's not easy to retain one's philosophy, not to obey the primitive instincts of any animal when it's ill-used and hurt, and to revenge oneself—to want to ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... very good words, Sedgwick," said Mr. Thompson approvingly. "The word I had on my tongue was—balderdash. But your thought was happier. Balderdash is a vague and shapeless term. It conjures up no definite vision. But drivel and ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... don't want any more of the drivel!" Bristow objected again, his voice raucous and still directed to Greenleaf. "What's your idea? I admit I'm wanted in New York on a trumped-up charge of embezzlement. This detective, by a stroke of blind luck, ran into that; and, as I say, I ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... such drivel? Lord Almighty! Who ever heard of ivy whining on a wall? Yellow ivy; that was all right. Yellow ivory also. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... The story was sentimental drivel, full of whimpering soft-heartedness and gushing egoism. All the art that Pettit had acquired was gone. A perusal of its buttery phrases would have made a cynic ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... you think I am uncivil To plague you with this draunting drivel, Abjuring a' intentions evil, I quat my pen, The Lord preserve us frae the ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... father? The dear old man, happy in his communications from his dead son, how would he be pleased to learn that they were not from his dead son at all, but the faked drivel ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... removed from the map of Europe as used by novelists, so much the better. But failure will always be secured, while the huge majority of authors do not aim high, but aim at being a little lower than the last domestic drivel which came out in three volumes, or the last analysis of the inmost self of some introspective young girl which crossed ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... Drill bori. Drill (tool) borilo. Drill (military) ekzerco. Drink trinki. Drink (to excess) drinki. Drink trinkajxo. Drinkable trinkebla. Drip guteti. Drive away (expel) forpeli. Drive (in carriage) veturi. Drive back (repel) repeli, repusxi. Drivel (to slaver) kracxeti. Driver (car, etc.) veturisto. Droll ridinda, sxerca. Drollery sxerco—ado. Dromedary unugxiba kamelo. Drone burdo. Droop (pine) malfortigxi. Drop guto. Dropsy akvosxvelo. Dross metala sxauxmo. Drought senpluveco. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... idea of the torrential character of the identification of opposites as it streams through the mind in this experience. I have sheet after sheet of phrases dictated or written during the intoxication, which to the sober reader seem meaningless drivel, but which at the moment of transcribing were fused in the fire of infinite rationality. God and devil, good and evil, life and death, I and thou, sober and drunk, matter and form, black and white, quantity and quality, shiver of ecstasy and shudder of horror, vomiting and swallowing, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... I would give my ears to understand is how you can go through a two hours' conversation with the girl you were engaged to—a conversation which must have affected the lives of both of you—and then come up to me and talk drivel about China ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... doublet, red hose, and black shoes. He represents an overgrown baby, but was a tumbler, and mimicked the barking of a dog. The word Bavian is derived from bavon, a "bib for a slabbering child" (see Cotgrave, French Dictionary). In modern French bave means "drivel," "slabbering," and the verb baver "to slabber," but the bib is ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... wholly was congealed. With six eyes did he weep, and down three chins Trickled the tear-drops and the bloody drivel. ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... feller that chatters all the time is bound to talk a certain amount of drivel.—The Sayings ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... to thy dearest friends; Unarmed run upon thy foemen's swords; Never fear any plague, before it fall: Dropsies and watery tympanies haunt thee; Thy lungs with surfeiting be putrified, To cause thee have an odious stinking breath; Slaver and drivel like a child at mouth; Be poor and beggarly in thy old age; Let thine own kinsmen laugh when thou complain'st, And many tears gain nothing but blind scoffs. This is the guerdon due to drunkenness: Shame, sickness, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... of God, quod a? nay let a whoreson drivel Prate here all day, with a foul evil, And all thy sermon goeth on covetise, And biddest men beware of avarice; And yet in thy sermon dost thou none other thing, But for alms stand all the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... and there was a new note of gladness in his voice which Reginald was quick to notice. "I haven't begun to drivel yet, Rege; and life counts for a good deal more when a man has an object than when he is ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... Chemist. Give me—Fosco—chemistry; and when Shakespeare has conceived Hamlet, and sits down to execute the conception—with a few grains of powder dropped into his daily food, I will reduce his mind, by the action of his body, till his pen pours out the most abject drivel that has ever degraded paper. Under similar circumstances, revive me the illustrious Newton. I guarantee that when he sees the apple fall he shall EAT IT, instead of discovering the principle of gravitation. Nero's dinner shall transform Nero into ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins |
