"Long-winded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is impossible to resist Sir Roger (young, slim, and handsome), carving the perverse widow's name upon a tree-trunk; or Sir Roger at bowls, or riding to hounds, or listening—with grave courtesy—to Will Wimble's long-winded and circumstantial account of the taking of the historic jack. Nor is the conception less happy of that amorous fine-gentleman ancestor of the Coverleys who first made love by squeezing the hand; or of that other Knight of the Shire who so narrowly escaped ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... up with each tree which she and Philetus had tapped, the business promised to make a long day of it. It might have been a pleasant day in pleasant company; but Fleda's spirits were down to set out with, and Doctor Quackenboss was not the person to give them the needed spring; his long-winded complimentary speeches had not interest enough even to divert her. She felt that she was entering upon an untried and most weighty undertaking; charging her time and thoughts with a burden they could well spare. Her energies did not flag, but the spirit that should have ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... monarch's son,— Brought to the lot of Belisarius,[26] Their wants supplied on alms precarious. To tell what fates, and winds, and weather, Had brought these mortals all together, Though from far distant points abscinded, Would make my tale long-winded. Suffice to say, that, by a fountain met, In council grave these outcasts held debate. The prince enlarged, in an oration set, Upon the mis'ries that befall the great. The shepherd deem'd it best to cast Off thought of all misfortune past, And each to do the best he could, In efforts ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... about it, Mary. You are so devilish high-handed. In short, I don't mind telling you that I was annoyed by your interference in the matter. But after mature consideration—I turned the matter over in my mind—I was not the least influenced by your long-winded epistle—that in fact rather put me off than otherwise—still after a time I wrote a manly, straightforward letter to Everard, not blinking the facts, and I told him that if his feelings were unchanged—mark that—as I had reason to believe Magdalen's were—he was at liberty ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... heavy, clumsy, dull. But when the worst has been said, when one has writhed under the recollection of an adipose prima donna fooling with bear-like skittishness a German tenor whose figure and face bewray the lager habit, when one has shuddered to remember the long-winded idiotic dialogue, the fact remains firmly set in one's mind that one has stood before a gigantic work of art—a work whose every defect is redeemed by its overwhelming power and beauty and pathos. There has never been, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... inferred, for many of the most delightful and daring NUANCES of free, free-spirited thought. And just as the buffoon and satyr are foreign to him in body and conscience, so Aristophanes and Petronius are untranslatable for him. Everything ponderous, viscous, and pompously clumsy, all long-winded and wearying species of style, are developed in profuse variety among Germans—pardon me for stating the fact that even Goethe's prose, in its mixture of stiffness and elegance, is no exception, as a reflection of the "good ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... possibly merited the name which some one gave her of "the thorn in the side of the convention." These annual gatherings were very largely in the nature of mutual admiration societies among the men, who consumed much of the time in complimenting each other and the rest of it in long-winded orations. During this one Miss Anthony arose and said that, as all members had the same right to speak, she would suggest that speeches should be limited so as to give each a chance. She made some ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... was a long-winded Counsel who had detested the late Mr. Justice Fewbanks because of the latter's habit of interrupting the addresses of Counsel with the object of inducing them to curtail their remarks. This practice was not only annoying to Counsel, who necessarily ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... country the protection, and their foreign policy the dignity, which other countries of far less importance are able to sustain. No wonder that her writers are pointing out that instead of being satisfied with immense long-winded despatches and notes, couched in grandiloquent language, which Spanish Foreign Ministers seem to think amply sufficient, strong nations have a habit of sending an iron-clad, or two or three cruisers to back ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... the libretto. The collaboration was not altogether happy, for although Jennens had considerable sense of the picturesque, and offered Handel opportunities for what may be called spectacular music on the grand scale, his literary style was pompous, rhetorical, and long-winded. Handel protested perpetually against the length of the work, for the Handelian style of composition naturally extended the prolixity of the words; Jennens greatly resented the musician's criticism, and insisted on printing ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... and long-winded narrative of the Laird was interrupted by the voice of some one ascending the stairs from the kitchen story, and singing at full pitch of voice. The high notes were too shrill for a man, the low seemed too deep for a woman. The words, as far as Mannering ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... halted, though not to take breath. Strong-limbed, long-winded lads like them—who could have "swarmed" in two minutes to the main truck of a man-o'-war—needed no such indulgence as that. Instead of one hundred feet of sloping sand, any one of them could have scaled Snowdon ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... could, an' bound for a lark anyhow. But we'd smuggled in novels and story-papers till our heads was full of what fine things we'd do. They didn't give us better things. There was books—yes, plenty of 'em—but mostly long-winded stuff about fellers that died young, bein' too good for this world. There wasn't anybody to tell us we'd a right to some fun, and the Lord meant us to enjoy life, nor to get us busy in some way that would take our minds ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... satisfactory sort of a fellow, but very long-winded"; considered Horace Walpole's "the best wit ever published in the shape of letters"; and dismissed Madame de Sevigne as "very much over-praised." Of Montaigne he says—"He thinks aloud, that is his great merit, but does not think ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... orators speaking in their familiar tones. You are mixed up with office-seekers, wire-pullers, inventors, artists, poets, prosers, (including editors, army-correspondents, attaches of foreign journals, and long-winded talkers,) clerks, diplomatists, mail-contractors, railway-directors, until your own identity is lost among them. Occasionally you talk with a man whom you have never before heard of, and are struck by the brightness of a thought, and fancy that there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... freely admit that he had not shown himself a master of dramatic craftsmanship. Faulty the piece no doubt is in several particulars. The soliloquies of Franz are too long-winded, and the same may be said of some of the robber-scenes. Spiegelberg's vulgar tongue is allowed to wag too freely. Contempt of quotidian probability is now and then carried so far as to produce an unintended effect of burlesque: as when the robbers, who are merely dissolute students from Leipzig, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Omer. 'That's right. And so, young gentleman,' he added, after a few moments' further rubbing of his chin, 'that you may not consider me long-winded as well as short-breathed, I believe that's ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... society talk, then to stories of the General's campaigns. Under the influence of the despised wine of Anjou, Monsieur de Mauves, whose temper needed no sweetening, became a little sleepy, prosy, and long-winded. General Ratoneau on his side was mightily cheered, and showed quite a new animation: long before the meal ended, he was talking more than the other three put together. It was he who had been the hero of ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... should Chamont make such a long-winded Simile almost in the Height of Rage for the Ruin of his Sister? Is that natural? Does not the Poet here quite hide his Hero to ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... bourgeoise. The Duc de Coislin was an exceedingly polite man, and bestowed amiable compliments and civilities upon their hostess, much to the disgust of the Chevalier. At parting, the Duke renewed the politeness he had displayed so abundantly the previous evening, and delayed the others by his long-winded flatteries. When, at last, they left the house, and were two or three leagues away from it, the Chevalier de Coislin said, that, in spite of all this politeness, he had reason to believe that their pretty hostess would not long be pleased with ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... energy are equal to the analysis of this accumulation, and to the discovery of the pearl of great price which lies hidden beneath this heap of rubbish." We have often met with women much more novel and profound in their observations than Laura Gay, but rarely with any so inopportunely long-winded. A clerical lord, who is half in love with her, is alarmed by the daring remarks just quoted, and begins to suspect that she is inclined to free-thinking. But he is mistaken; when in a moment of sorrow he delicately begs leave ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... that he had to listen to anything said loudly enough in his presence. For him there was no escape. Through an endless hour, that sometimes would verge on the five quarters, he had to sit there and take in every word of a long-winded, moralistic discourse dealing in forbidding terms with things that left his brain as untouched as if they had been uttered in a strange tongue. He had a sense of warnings and threats that seemed to connect with what his mother had asked him not to heed. He was ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... "Ned" of the Adventure Books was supplanted by the Romantic Heroine of the Victorian Age and the Long-winded Immaculate who ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... gradually steals upon the reader and subjects him to incalculable minor effects, is not the property of any one age, but of every age; and Victorian prose in general, and Borrow's in particular, attains it. "Wild Wales" is rough in grain; it can be long-winded, slovenly and dull: but it can also be read; and if the whole, or any large portion, be read continuously it will give a lively and true impression of a beautiful, diverse country, of a distinctive people, and of a number of vivid men and women, including ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... inhabitants of that region; born, and bred there from boyhood, who had long since become wheezy and asthmatical, and short of breath, except in the article of story-telling; in which respect they were still marvellously long-winded. These gentry were much opposed to steam and all new-fangled ways, and held ballooning to be sinful, and deplored the degeneracy of the times; which that particular member of each little club who kept the keys of the nearest church, professionally, always attributed ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the physical cause of the Deluge, on Irish literature, on the origin of language, on the evidences for Christianity, and on all other sorts of unrelated topics. Hazlitt thought that the soul of Rabelais had passed into Amory, while a more recent critic can see in his long-winded discussions naught but the "light-headed ramblings of delirium." If we try to read John Buncle consecutively, the result is boredom; but if we open the book at random, we are pretty sure to be interested and even sometimes ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... Nurse gasped once or twice, looked up at the Doctor with eyes which plainly declared "there never was your equal for blessedness and goodness under the sun," and commenced her story in the long-winded manner ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... accent I judge you are a man of some education," he said, lighting a cigar. "No—DON'T begin that explanation of yours. I know it will be long-winded from your face, and I am much too old a liar to be interested in other men's lying. You are, I say, a person of education. You do well to dress as a curate. Even among educated people you might pass as ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... American war broke out, that I came into Parliament. My Lord Chatham, whose wisdom his party in those days used to call superhuman, raised his oracular voice in the House of Peers against the American contest; and my countryman, Mr. Burke—a great philosopher, but a plaguy long-winded orator—was the champion of the rebels in the Commons—where, however, thanks to British patriotism, he could get very few to back him. Old Tiptoff would have sworn black was white if the great Earl had bidden him; ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Oratory. For he that names but FLETCHER must needs be Found guilty of a loud hyperbole. His fancy so transcendently aspires, He showes himselfe a witt, who but admires. Here are no volumes stuft with cheverle sence, The very Anagrams of Eloquence, Nor long-long-winded sentences that be, Being rightly spelld, but Witts Stenographie. Nor words, as voyd of Reason, as of Rithme, Only cesura'd to spin out the time. But heer's a Magazine of purest sence Cloathed in the newest ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... said Marston, grimly, "the whole thing is, as you term it, odd; and I can see no object in your picking out this particular singularity for long-winded criticism, except to cast scandal upon my household, by leaving a hideous and vague imputation floating among the members of it. Sir, sir, this is a foul way," he cried, sternly, "to ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... was not as "long-winded" as some orators of whom we have read, and, unhappily, heard; and therefore we cannot say to what extent his passion would have led him on the present occasion. There was no fear of consequences to deter him from smiting ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... apologize for this long-winded confession, which indeed is "most impertinent" to the play, as he admits, though most interesting to him and to us, for he is simply Shakespeare telling us his own feelings at the time. The gentle magician then hears from Ariel how the ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... Jacob, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, settled himself to recount the adventure of the bear. Hector, who had heard Louis's edition of the roast bear, was almost impatient at being forced to listen to old Jacob's long-winded history, which included about a dozen other stories, all tagged on to this, like links of a lengthened chain; and he was not sorry when the old lumberer, taking his red night-cap out of his pocket, at last stretched himself out on a buffalo skin he ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... compromise with Jeffords about the tract in Dallas, and he is to meet Wharton and myself at your law-shop to-morrow. It is important to make an arrangement with Jeffords—his example will be felt by Brownsell and Gibbon. We may escape a long-winded lawsuit, after all, to your great discomfiture and my gain. But you do ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... proportions all wrong, too much love an' not enough work, or the other way round. Henry's very likely to get them all wrong, an' I want to see that he doesn't. Now, you understand me, don't you? I'm a long-winded man, an' it's hard to make out what I'm drivin' at, but that can't be helped. Everybody has a nature, an' I have mine, an' bedam ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... long-winded, in many points like papa; mere R., nice, delicate, likes hymns, knew Aunt Margaret ('t'ould man knew Uncle Alan); fille R., nommee Sara (no h), rather nice, lights up well, good voice, INTERESTED face; Miss L., nice also, washed ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who had not proved by more than mushroom or retail success in business that he was able and likely to better her fortune. Miss Millicent must plainly either be run away with, or fairly won on old Hopkins's plan of wholesale, long-winded business success. Miss Millicent's good looks, if they did not amount to beauty, did, nevertheless, add something to the attractiveness of her vast pecuniary prospects. Chip had obtained the young lady's decided favor without absolutely crossing the Rubicon himself, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... the papers With a lengthy interview 'Bout the "welfare of the people," And the "octopi" he knew; And he made long-winded speeches As he raked things fore and aft, But he only talked "retrenchment," While he ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... sometimes marked with great ability, and generally delivered with much eloquence and fervour, at the short annual sessions. The proceedings were usually controlled by a small caucus who drew up long-winded resolutions, often embodying half a score of resolutions carried in previous sessions. Some one delivered a soul-stirring oration, and then the "omnibus" resolution, which was not even always read out, was put to the vote and passed unanimously. ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... receptacle of lime which was being slaked for patching up a wall. Lime, in that condition, is boiling hot. Mr. Keith's trousers were rather badly scalded. He was sensitive on that point. He suffered a good deal. People came to express their sympathy. The pain made him more tedious, long-winded and exhortatory than usual. At that particular moment Denis was being victimized. He had thoughtlessly called to express his sympathy, to see those celebrated cannas, and because he could not bear to be alone with ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... This attack was commenced by the ladies, but it was continued throughout the dinner by the fat-headed old gentleman next the parson with the persevering assiduity of a slow hound, being one of those long-winded jokers who, though rather dull at starting game, are unrivalled for their talents in hunting it down. At every pause in the general conversation he renewed his bantering in pretty much the same terms, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... gas corporations interrupted freely. The mayor himself was constantly drawn into the argument, but his replies were so simple and convincing that there was not much satisfaction to be had in stirring him. Instead, the various counsel took refuge in long-winded discussions about the methods of conducting gas plants in other cities, the cost of machinery, labor and the like, which took days and days, and threatened to extend into weeks. The astounding facts concerning large profits and the present ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... gravely stroked his beard, and gave vent to a few polite expressions of welcome. To these Sheikh Abdul Qadir vouchsafed no reply beyond a grunt. The chief glanced at Shah Sowar, and that excellent comedian, assuming the ashamed look of one disgraced by his master's rudeness, at once made a long-winded and complimentary reply in the most fluent and high-flown Persian. Then, before the effect should be lost, he ordered in tea, and commenced an animated conversation with the two strangers, all parties absolutely ignoring, out of politeness, Sheikh Abdul Qadir ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... an action was trying, for damages sustained in some accident upon a railway. The witnesses had been examined, and counsel was addressing the jury. The learned gentleman (like a few of his English brethren) was desperately long-winded, and had a remarkable capacity of saying the same thing over and over again. His great theme was 'Warren the ENGINE driver,' whom he pressed into the service of every sentence he uttered. I listened to him for about a quarter ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... nights after this, when the pack was following together the discouraging trail of a long-winded and wily buck, they crossed the trail of a man on snow-shoes. This trail was fresher, and to the young wolves it seemed to promise easier hunting. The leaders were overruled, and the new trail was taken up ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of them also value themselves on being descended from their Jugglers, who are a sort of men that pretend to foretel futurity by a thousand ridiculous contorsions and grimaces, and by frightful and long-winded howlings. ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... some one had set loose a dog that Cox owned. It was a miserable cur, but was long-winded, like its master, and possessed of good barking qualities. Rivers got well concealed, but the dog was after him—bark, bark, bark; he tried all he could to quiet him, but could not. Soon a neighboring dog commenced to ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... et contra. His tongue goes always before his wit, like gentleman-usher, but somewhat faster. That he be a complete gallant in all points, cap-a-pie, witness his horsemanship and the wearing of his weapons. He is commonly long-winded, able to speak more with ease than any man can endure to hear with patience. University jests are his universal discourse, and his news the demeanour of the proctors. His phrase, the apparel of his mind, is made of divers ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... happen? Who got you the sitivation? Look alive! Don't be long-winded, I see they're gittin' ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... much as possible, and many companies of infantry were placed on horseback, for Rosecrans had discovered that little or nothing could be done against the enemy's raiders by foot soldiers, no matter how daring or long-winded on the ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... "he is wordy; he's long-winded, a plodder in argument, and a good logician; but he doesn't understand the higher logic, that of events and circumstances; consequently he has never had, and never will have, the ear ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... may be replaced by a better; and it is the less necessary to do so, as a second edition of Mr. Spencer's remarkable essay on this subject has just been published. After wading through pages of the long-winded confusion and second-hand information of the "Philosophic Positive," at the risk of a crise cerebrale—it is as good as a shower-bath to turn to the "Classification of the Sciences," and refresh oneself with Mr. Spencer's profound thought, ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... your long-winded way, if you like," said Algernon; "all I know is, that I should often have wanted a five-pound note, if—that is, if I hadn't happened to be dressed like a gentleman. With your prospects, Ned, I should propose to charming Peggy tomorrow morning early. We mustn't let ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Candles—a Myth." Would to heaven his invention of juries was a myth, too. Scotland Yard would get on much better without them. "A Lamp-clock was another Simple and Ingenious Design." How intolerably long-winded the writer was. What had he to say about hood clocks? "Very few of the Early Clocks had Dials. The Device was generally a Mechanical Figure which struck the Hour on a Bell." Evidently the forerunner of the devilish alarum clock. "Early clockmakers—Old ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... my dearie. You say your mother married a Smith. Was that the Smith who kept a dancing and boxing place near London Bridge? Were you born in England?" I told the old mother all I knew about myself and my relations. You know that no Gorgios are so long-winded on genealogies as old mothers in Rom. When people don't write them down in their family Bibles, they carry them, extended, in their heads. Que la main droit ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... vanished. He, too, resolved to vary his visits, and, starting with a basis of two a week, sat trying to solve the mathematical chances of selecting the same as Kate Nugent; calculations which were not facilitated by a long-winded account from Mr. Wilks of certain interesting amours ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... thoughts of the theatre, and the performance, and the recollection of it afterwards; but you have not told us how you will enjoy the thoughts of it on your death-bed." Of course the "fine lady" was converted on the spot, as they always are in tracts; and the good old fellow brought his long-winded narrative of experiences to an end by-and-by, the pastor having omitted to pull his coat-tails, as he promised to do if any speaker exceeded the allotted time. "The people were certainly very attentive to hear him," and one man next my boy expressed his ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... the cause of which he at once insinuated to be that the minor canon very likely wanted to see his newest models. The truth is, Master Wacht felt very shy at the possibility of having to listen to the canon's long-winded sermons, which he would deliver himself of uselessly if he attempted to shake his (Wacht's) resolution with respect to Nanni and Jonathan. Accident came to his rescue; for just as the canon, the young lawyer, and the varnisher were standing together, and the first-named was beginning to ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... long-winded Letter, full of compliments, Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining repartees, and other ephemeral trivialities, proceeds to remind us of what we knew well already: that however it may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract Science ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... honour, and address. Men of talents were often, he observed, devoid of integrity, and men of integrity devoid of talents. When he had obtained Hervey's assent to this proposition, he next paid him sundry handsome, but long-winded compliments: then he complimented himself for having just thought of Mr. Hervey as the fittest person he could apply to: then he congratulated himself upon his good luck in meeting with the very man he ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... natural, tongues presently began to wag. Soon it was common talk in Paris that M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour had disappeared from his home and that Madame was trying to put a bold face upon the occurrence. There were surmises and there was gossip— oh! interminable and long-winded gossip! Minute circumstances in connexion with M. le Marquis's private life and Mme. la Marquise's affairs were freely discussed in the cafes, the clubs and restaurants, and as no one knew the facts of the case, ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... book, though it is ill calculated for the hasty readers of to-day. Indeed, the defects are serious enough. The class of writing to which it belongs demands a certain dramatic picturesqueness to point the moral effectively. Not only the long-winded sentences, but the slow evolution of thought and the deliberation with which he works out his pictures of misery, make the general effect dull beside such books as 'Candide' or 'Gulliver's Travels.' A touch of ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... truth-speaking witnesses, be amerced in such penalty, not exceeding a certain sum, as in the estimation of the presiding magistrate should be held to be a proper compensation for the injury to his reputation suffered by the plaintiff. When the clerk drew breath at the end of the long-winded clause, I inquired if the law in question made no counter-provision for cases which might occur where, the abusive term being richly deserved, it could be no crime to apply it. The schoolmaster, who, despite his patched habiliments, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... generals; you hear statesmen and orators speaking in their familiar tones. You are mixed up with office-seekers, wire-pullers, inventors, artists, poets, prosers (including editors, army-correspondents, attaches of foreign journals, and long-winded talkers), clerks, diplomatists, mail-contractors, railway-directors, until your own identity is lost among them. Occasionally you talk with a man whom you have never before heard of, and are struck with the brightness of a thought, and fancy that there ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... relating to the Dutch Colonial System, this work has been excessively praised, both for its own merits, and for its supposed crushing exposure of the iniquities of the Dutch government of Java. Greatly to my surprise, I found it a very tedious and long-winded story, full of rambling digressions; and whose only point is to show that the Dutch Residents and Assistant Residents wink at the extortions of the native princes; and that in some districts the natives ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... formed Mrs. Haywood's chief stock in trade when she first set up for a writer of fiction, inherited many of the characteristics of the long-winded French romances. Though some were told with as much directness as any of the intercalated narratives in "Clelie" or "Cleopatre," others permitted the inclusion of numerous "little histories" only loosely connected with the main plot. Letters ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... him perfectly well from here," Bill muttered—and indeed the professor's mellifluous tones pervaded every nook and cranny of the thin-walled house. "Long-winded cultist! What is he a professor of, ...
— The Doorway • Evelyn E. Smith
... you got there?" asked Elmer, who knew Landy to be long-winded, and that often the quickest way to learn facts from him was to put him on ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... all a wife has to do is to sit down and mould him as she pleases. Well, some men may be like that, but Peter isn't. The family never really have forgiven me for calling their darling "Charles Edward" Peter. I perfectly loathe that long-winded Walter-Scotty name, and I don't care how many grandfathers it's descended from. I'm sorry, of course, if it hurts their feelings, but as long as I don't object to their calling him what THEY like, I don't see why they mind. ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... ancestors were long-winded! A part of this narrative is as follows: "I shall furnish you with an account of the treatment that I, with other of my fellow citizens, received on board the Jersey and John prison ships, those monuments of British barbarity and infamy. I shall give you nothing but a plain ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... sparkling with wit and imagination, but often dirty and ridiculous. Saint-Amant possessed plenty of imagination and capacity for exquisite poetical feeling, but he lacked taste and too often was puerile. Wiser than they, yet themselves verbose, long-winded, slow, and spun out, Desportes translated into French verse Italian poetry of the sixteenth century, often with very happy turns of expression, and Bertaut, melancholy and graceful, lacked brilliance even if he possessed ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... this out quite by accident, and will explain the incident to you. You must forgive me if I am lengthy; but I can only write in my own way, dear Trix, and perhaps that will be a little long-winded. ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... fence, I grafted it myself: I took great pains to get the right kind. I sent clean up to Roxberry and away down to Squawneck Creek.' I was afeard he was a-goin' to give me day and date for every graft, bein' a terrible long-winded man in his stories; so says I, 'I know that, minister, but how do you preserve them?' 'Why, I was a-goin' to tell you,' said he, 'when you stopped me. That are outward row I grafted myself with the choicest kind I could find, and I succeeded. They are beautiful, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... additional embroideries, are set out at greater length in other volumes by Ferdinand Bac (who confounds Ludwig I with Maximilian II) and the equally unreliable Eugene de Mirecourt and Auguste Papon. German writers, on the other hand, have, if apt to be long-winded, at least avoided the more obvious pitfalls. Among the books and pamphlets (many of them anonymous) of Teutonic origin, the following will repay research: Die Graefin Landsfeld (Gustav Bernhard); Lola Montez, Graefin von Landsfeld (Johann Deschler); ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... fever, cough, or pleurisy, Should never hurt me, nor the tardy gout: But in my time, I should be once surprised By a strong tedious talker, that should vex And almost bring me to consumption: Therefore, if I were wise, she warn'd me shun All such long-winded monsters as my bane; For if I could but 'scape that one discourser, I might no doubt prove an old aged man.— By your ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... but the Folio does not reprint from these Quartos, but from enlarged, amended, and enormously improved copies. Messrs. Heminge and Condell, the editor of this priceless treasure, the First Folio, wrote a long-winded dedication to Lords Pembroke and Montgomery, which contains but one pertinent passage, in which they ask their readers to believe that it had been the office of the editors to collect and publish the author's 'mere ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... not going to enter into a long-winded discussion of these points at this time, since the testimony is going to show very rapidly what the facts are. We have a number of witnesses here, and we are all anxious to have them heard. What I am going to ask you to remember is that there is not one scintilla ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... as he gazed into her face he forgot where he was, did not even wonder why his brother had suddenly turned away and, beginning some long-winded speech, had rushed after a man who hastily covered his head and tried to escape; he did not notice that thousands of eyes were fixed on him, and among them his mother's; he could merely repeat: "thanks" and "Dada"—the only words he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not soil the uniform of Washington as he rode past on his snow-white charger, amid the acclamations of the multitude. I have seen Hull and his tars pass up the street, bearing the stripes and stars in triumph from the war of the ocean. I have heard long-winded orators spout over my head in emulation of my craft, "in one weak, washy, everlasting flood." I have seen many a military, many a civic pageant. The last I witnessed was, as Dick Swiveller remarks, a 'stifler.' It was that confounded Water Celebration. Republics is ungrateful. I was forgotten ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... variability of the Malayan Papilionidae.) It is admirably done. I cannot conceive that the most firm believer in species could read it without being staggered. Such papers will make many more converts among naturalists than long-winded books such as I shall write if I have strength. I have been particularly struck with your remarks on dimorphism; but I cannot quite understand one point (page 22), (189/3. The passage referred to in this letter as ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... hour to describe a game!" I cried indignantly. "Why, it was you that took half an hour with some long-winded story about a buffalo. Professor Summerlee ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and with those repetitions and recapitulations peculiar to the simple, but by no means short annals of the poor, and especially of the English poor. Yet, Christian, the impatient, the ardent, stood and listened with respectful and absorbed interest. Cottingham might be elderly, egotistic, long-winded, but at this period of her career, Christian's hot heart beat throb for throb with his, and the thought, as he said, of "that pore little bitch stoppin' out, and maybe spoilt, so that there'd be nothin' for us but to shoot her, through learnin' to run sheep," had precisely ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... of Scott to Scott himself, and recognize that he often wrote a style cumbrous and diffuse; that he was tediously analytical where the modern novelist is dramatic, and evolved his characters by means of long-winded explanation and commentary; that, except in the case of his lower-class personages, he made them talk as seldom man and never woman talked; that he was tiresomely descriptive; that on the simplest occasions he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... an attachment for the very stones in the streets of Genoa, and to look back upon the city with affection as connected with many hours of happiness and quiet! But these are my first impressions honestly set down; and how they changed, I will set down too. At present, let us breathe after this long-winded journey. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... on the one hand the splendour of Eastern costume, and on the other the wildness of Eastern fiction, he mixed these with just so much ordinary feeling and expression, as rendered them interesting and intelligible, while he abridged the long-winded narratives, curtailed the monotonous reflections, and rejected the endless repetitions of the Arabian original. The tales, therefore, though less purely Oriental than in their first concoction, were eminently better fitted for ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... of this indefensible book. These articles have another disadvantage arising from the scurry in which they were written; they are too long-winded and elaborate. One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time. If I have to start for High-gate this day week, I may perhaps go the shortest way. If I have to start this ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... myself to her for assistance. The good lady had far more regard than the owners of it for the library, and was delighted with the pains I was taking to re-arrange and clean it. She would allow no one to help me but herself; and to many a long-winded story, most of which I forgot as soon as I heard them, did I listen, or seem to listen, while she dusted the shelves and ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... appears to have been a contemporary of Tu Mu. Ch'ao Kung-wu says that he was impelled to write a new commentary on Sun Tzu because Ts'ao Kung's on the one hand was too obscure and subtle, and that of Tu Mu on the other too long-winded and diffuse. Ou-yang Hsiu, writing in the middle of the 11th century, calls Ts'ao Kung, Tu Mu and Ch'en Hao the three chief commentators on Sun Tzu, and observes that Ch'en Hao is continually attacking Tu Mu's shortcomings. His ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... out of the door, while the duke began pacing up and down the room, muttering and growling, and balling his fists, and jingling his shining medals. He kicked over an inoffensive hassock and his favorite hound, and I don't know how many long-winded German oaths he let go. (It's a mighty hard language to swear in, especially when a man's ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... day of rest, and on that day all who are able love to go out to the Kiat-hane—the "paper-mill,"—where they pass the afternoon in driving and walking, eating sweetmeats, smoking, drinking coffee, watching gypsy girls dance, or listening to the long-winded tales of professional story-tellers. Almost every day had its regular excursion, and it was clear to me that he always chose the place where on that day of the week there was likely to be the ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... their fate to be sealed by the outcome of deadly combat between the contending factions. Armed to the teeth, the cavaliers of the respective parties march to and fro, haranguing each other in monotonous tones. After a long-winded, wearisome challenge, they brandish their weapons and meet in a series of single combats which merge in a general melee as the princes are vanquished and the hand of the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... to hell. The moon, deliver'd from her pain, Displays her silver face again. Note here, that in the chemic style, The moon is silver all this while. So (if my simile you minded, Which I confess is too long-winded) When late a feminine magician,[1] Join'd with a brazen politician,[2] Exposed, to blind the nation's eyes, A parchment[3] of prodigious size; Conceal'd behind that ample screen, There was no silver to be seen. But to this parchment let the Drapier Oppose his counter-charm of paper, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... only work out the justification by long argumentative speeches, both poems lamentably fail as real solutions of the difficulty. To this I shall recur, and here merely observe that qui s' excuse s' accuse: a God who can only explain himself by the help of long-winded scolding, or of long-winded advocacy, though he employ an archangel for advocate, has given away the half of his case by the implicit admission that there are two sides to the question. And when we ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... neighbouring kings heard at length of Tushratta's financial success and were naturally envious. An extract will give the reader a more definite notion of this royal correspondence with its stylisms and turns of thought. The following is taken from Letter VIII. in the British Museum edition. The long-winded introduction was already a fixed convention, and occurs in all the letters from whatever country, but the declaration of affection is ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... lamb's-eyes at the object of his affections—to the amorous audacity of the full-grown sheep he never soared—then suddenly, without the slightest provocation, he would discharge at her a compliment, elaborate, long-winded, Grandisonian, as a raw recruit fires his musket, shutting his eyes, and incontinently take to flight, without waiting to see the effect of his shot. If he had spent half the time and pains on his sermons that he did on his small-talk (I believe he used to write ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... a rule the man who has been led to believe that he is a brilliant and interesting talker has been led to make himself a rapacious pest. No conversation is possible between others whose ears are within reach of his ponderous voice; anecdotes, long-winded stories, dramatic and pathetic, stock his repertoire; but worst of all are his humorous yarns at which he laughs uproariously though every one else grows solemn and ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... consent we both walked aft to the binnacle and peered into it. The schooner had swung several points while the gunner had been spinning his somewhat long-winded yarn, for the bearing which he gave now lay about a point over the starboard quarter. I stared into the blackness in that direction, but could see nothing. Then I got the night glass and, setting it to my focus, raised it to my eye, pointing it out ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... three volumes quarto, by Thomas Ledyard, who had accompanied him in many of his later travels, and had been the spectator of some of the last of his military exploits. This is a work of much higher authority, and contains much valuable information; but it is prolix, long-winded, and diffuse, filled with immaterial documents, and written throughout in a tone of inflated panegyric. III. Another life of Marlborough, written with more ability, appeared at Paris in 1806, in three ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... respectful observance went all currently down with Owen; but my father looked a little closer into men's bosoms, and whether suspicious of this excess of deference, or, as a lover of brevity and simplicity in business, tired with these gentlemen's long-winded professions of regard, he had uniformly resisted their desire to become his sole agents in Scotland. On the contrary, he transacted many affairs through a correspondent of a character perfectly different—a man whose good opinion of himself amounted to self-conceit, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Mrs. Arnold had divined her friend's thoughts. "Hubert," said she, rather excitedly, "I firmly believe, and will always believe, that if we had not taken matters in time that Phil Lawson, with his long-winded speeches, would have wrought a spell upon papa and so completely influenced him that he would have had Madge body and soul, for I am certain that she was ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... lines in which every conceivable change is rung upon Amo o non amo?... Io vivo e moro pur.... Io non ho core e lo mio cor n'ha dui.... With all this effort no one is convinced of Falserina's emotion, and her long-winded oration reads like a schoolboy's exercise upon some line of the fourth Aeneid. Yet if we allow the sense of rhythmical melody to intervene between our intellectual perception and Marino's language, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... matter Mr. Harold Smith had not been perspicacious. Mr. Harold Smith was not personally a popular man with any party, though some judged him to be eminently useful. He was laborious, well-informed, and, on the whole, honest; but he was conceited, long-winded, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... that it is ably done," continued his majesty, still attentively observing him. "You will acknowledge that it is exceedingly difficult to render the concise style of Tacitus into the prolix, long-winded German?" ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... pleasure-giver in motion, as no novel-writer—not even Cervantes—had ever done before." For myself, I doubt whether the exaltation of Fielding has not become too much a matter of orthodoxy in recent years. Compare him with Swift, and he is long-winded in his sentences. Compare him with Sterne, and his characters are mechanical. Compare him with Dickens, and he reaches none of the depths, either of laughter or of sadness. This is not to question the ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... It was very amusing to listen to his solemn consultations with the nurse every morning before he betook himself to the office, and to watch the lively, almost child-like interest with which, on returning in the evening, he listened to her long-winded report of the baby's wonderful doings during the day. On Sundays, when he always spent the whole afternoon at home, I often surprised him in the most undignified attitudes, creeping about on the floor ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... shoulders broad, your tongue short, your hips muscular, but your penis small. But if you follow the fashions of the day, you will be pallid in hue, have narrow shoulders, a narrow chest, a long tongue, small hips and a big tool; you will know how to spin forth long-winded arguments on law. You will be persuaded also to regard as splendid everything that is shameful and as shameful everything that is honourable; in a word, you will wallow in ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... the close of the first quarter of the eighteenth century. Richardson had done a great deal for it: but it was impossible that, on his method, it should not, for the most part, be languid, or at any rate long-winded. Here again Fielding spirits the thing up—oxygenates and ozonises the atmosphere: while, in even fuller measure than his predecessor and victim, he recognises the efficacy of dialogue as the revealer of character. He has, assisted ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... above sea-level, east-by-south from last camp—Mount Owen Stanley due north. Oriope is Mr. Lawes's great friend. He used to live in Munikahila, but trouble through marrying a wife has sent him in here. He seems greatly attached to Ruatoka. He is a terrible talker, long-winded and deafening. ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... injunctions of the Koran, whether it be in the matter of wines and strong drinks, or the more constitutional difficulty touching loans, debts, and the like. For myself, I rather incline to the view of the old Pacha, who, after listening with his habitual patience to the long-winded arguments of a Protestant missionary, completely dumb-foundered that excellent divine by remarking that he (the Pacha) felt quite convinced of the similarity of their creeds, since the only apparent difference was, that the Christian has three Gods and one wife, while the Mussulman has three wives ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... finished and (if I may so express it) clean cut; never long-winded or prosy; enlivened by vivid illustrations. He was an excellent raconteur, and his stories had a stamp of their own which would have made them always and everywhere acceptable. His sense of humour and economy of words would have made it impossible, had he lived to ninety, that they should ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... Constitutions which justify the predetermined course. This being, as a rule, true, the business of the historian is to understand the influences which led to the first, not the second, decision of the Representative or Senator or President or even Justice of the Supreme Court. Hence long-winded speeches or tortuous decisions of courts have not been studied so closely as the statistics of the cotton or tobacco crops, the reports of manufacturers, and the conditions of the frontier, which determined more of the votes ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... James's Street, one of the proprietors of the Herald (now dead) being also his guest. This gentleman suddenly turned to Donald, and speaking not with intentional brutality, but simply in the frankness of unrestrained good-fellowship, asked him "when that d——d long-winded story of his was going to stop?" adding that it must be got out of the way in a week or two, as they wanted to begin the publication of another. I saw how my poor friend turned pale at the cruel thrust. He faltered ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... on a system; on finding a band, one man would do the running for six or eight miles, then another would relieve him, and so on, the idea being to get outside of them and so gradually round them in to the grazing herd. We had special horses kept and used for this purpose, fast and long-winded, as the pace had to be great and one must be utterly regardless of dog and badger holes, etc. This kind of work we kept up for a couple of weeks, some days being successful, some days getting a run but securing nothing. We made a satisfactory gathering of all the gentler and more tractable mares, ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... the Confutators employed their commission for the purpose of casting suspicion on the Lutherans and inciting the Emperor against them. They disregarded the imperial admonition for moderation, and instead of an objective answer to the Augustana, they produced a long-winded pasquinade against Luther and the Evangelical preachers, a fit companion piece to the 404 theses of Eck—a general accusation against the Protestants, a slanderous anthology of garbled quotations from Luther, Melanchthon, and other Evangelical preachers. The insinuation lurking in ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... we afford no diversion to studies; especially when trifles may be a whet to more serious thoughts, and comical matters may be so treated of, as that a reader of ordinary sense may possibly thence reap more advantage than from some more big and stately argument: as while one in a long-winded oration descants in commendation of rhetoric or philosophy, another in a fulsome harangue sets forth the praise of his nation, a third makes a zealous invitation to a holy war with the Turks, another confidently sets up for a fortune-teller, and a fifth states questions upon mere impertinences. ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... and he was in the habit of reading short stories aloud to his family, in English. He admired the American short story, and I remember that he declared: 'The Americans know how to plunge into a short story. We Germans are too long-winded.'" ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... count—at least none except the lamb scrape are worth talking about, Harnett, so don't read me one of your long-winded lectures; and, now that I have hit the knot in the barn, I promise not to shoot at anything within half a mile of the place. I'm going down to town for a while, and when I get through with what I have on hand, we'll make some arrangement to show ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... to Kinmont Willie, I wrote: "There is a prose account very like the ballad in Scott of Satchells' History of the Name of Scott" (1688). Satchells' long-winded story is partly in unrhymed and unmetrical lines, partly in rhymes of various metres. The man, born in 1613, was old, had passed his life as a soldier; certainly could not write, possibly could ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... watching for the opportunity that never came, and consoling himself with the fact that no one else seemed more fortunate in winning her favour than he. The only strange male who attained to the privilege of addressing her was a long-winded and elderly gentleman of the British perpetual-travelling type, at least one representative of which is found on every transcontinental train, and it was plain enough ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... long-winded digression is not to excite sympathy on behalf of Logotheti, but to forestall surprise at some of the things he did when he had convinced himself that of all the women he had ever met, Margaret Donne was the one that suited him best, and that she must ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... was brief enough, but there was plenty of husk to the grain. The old expatriate was querulous, long-winded, not niggard with his ink when he cursed the English and damned the Prussians; and he obtained much gratification in jabbing his quill-bodkin into what he termed the sniveling nobility of the old regime. Dog of dogs! was he not himself noble? Had not his parents and ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... "a miss;" "lumina" are "the peepers;" "turbatum fugere" is "to scower off in a mighty bustle;" "confundor" is "to be jumbled;" and "squalidus" is "in a sorry pickle." "Importuna" is "a plaguy baggage;" "adulterium" is rendered "her pranks;" "ambages" becomes either "a long rabble of words," "a long-winded detail," or "a tale of a tub;" "miserabile carmen" is "a dismal ditty;" "increpare hos" is "to rattle these blades;" "penetralia" means "the parlour;" while "accingere," more literally than elegantly, is translated "buckle to." "Situs" is "nasty stuff;" "oscula jungere" is ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Prince, in his most impatient tone, 'old people should not be so long-winded! Tell me what country I have got into, ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... In town I stayed then with such boon companions as Tommy Lawson, my Lord Halifax, Sir Jasper Lemarck, little Geordie Chichester, aye, and old Sidney Godolphin of the Treasury; for with all his staid ways and long-winded budgets he could drain a cup with the best of us, and was as keen on a main of cocks as on a committee of ways and means. Well, it was rare sport while it lasted, and sink me if I wouldn't do the same again if I had my time once more. It is like sliding down a greased plank ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Crites, who is not more long-winded than may be permitted to a polite proser, at least on the Thames of a summer evening, somewhat condensed, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... my long-winded sacrifices to the god of reason distasteful? I believe I am involuntarily making them so because I am jealous of the fellow after all. Nevertheless I am serious; I want you to get married; though I shall always have a secret grudge against the man who marries ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... line along the beach to await orders. What was expected of them that night, none knew. A few of the earlier arrivals, not too fully occupied with work or sleep completely to ignore them, welcomed them warmly, and immediately launched into long-winded accounts of previous fighting. With an air of conscious superiority, they gave them hints and advice, and told vividly of trials, troubles and dangers. All this the new-comers accepted unchallenged and ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... Belmour (dressed in the French fashion and waited on by English imitators of Scapin and Frontin). Their calling is to be irresistible, and to conquer everywhere. Like the heroes of the chivalry story, whose long-winded loves and combats they were sending out of fashion, they are always splendid and triumphant—overcome all dangers, vanquish all enemies, and win the beauty at the end. Fathers, husbands, usurers are the foes these champions contend with. They are merciless ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... could throw this boy and I was satisfied. I selected a boy to run a race; if the boy passed me, then I made the distance longer, and if he passed me again, I made the distance still longer, for I knew that I was long-winded. Then I won ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... coin for laughter by the clever comedian. Amph. 551-632 could be worked up poco a poco crescendo e animato; in Poen. 504 ff., Agorastocles and the Advocati bandy extensive rhetoric; in Trin. 276 ff., the action is suspended while Philto proves himself Polonius' ancestor in his long-winded sermonizing to Lysiteles and his insistent laudatio temporis acti; in St. 326 ff., as Pinacium, the servus currens, finally succeeds in "arriving" out of breath (he has been running since 274), bursting with the vast importance ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... when two were weary: To three fair virgins I did tie men, In the close bands of pleasing Hymen; I dipp'd two babes in holy water, And purified their mother after. Within an hour and eke a half, I preach'd three congregations deaf; Where, thundering out, with lungs long-winded, I chopp'd so fast, that few there minded. My emblem, the laborious sun, Saw all these mighty labours done Before one race of his was run. All this perform'd by Robert Hewit: What mortal else ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... paid goodly tribute to the mighty power of ridicule that pursued him. He liked to hear himself talk, and he talked on all occasions; he solemnly delivered himself of dry and long-winded sentences which passed for eloquence among the upper bourgeoisie of Arcis. The poor fellow belonged to that species of bore which desires to explain everything, even the simplest thing. He explained rain; he explained the revolution of July; he explained things impenetrable; ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... younger PITT. I have read somewhere of the younger PITT that he cared more for power than for measures, and was ready to sacrifice great causes with which he had sincerely sympathised rather than raise an opposition that might imperil his ascendency. That is just the kind of nasty and long-winded thing that anybody might say about anybody. It was by disregarding this kind of criticism that the younger PITT kept on being younger. But apart from this, does Mr. LLOYD GEORGE quote HORACE in the House? Never, thank goodness. How many times did WILLIAM PITT cross the English Channel? Only ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... gardens, with a gentle green slope behind, and a much steeper one in front, closed in by the beechwoods. The house stood as it were sideways, or had been made to do so by later inhabitants. I know this is very long-winded, but there have been such alterations that without minute description this narrative ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Duke of Doncaster! Come, come, Mr. Deuceace, don't you be running your rigs upon me; I ain't the man to be bamboozl'd by long-winded stories about dukes and duchesses. You think I don't know you; every man knows you and your line of country. Yes, you're after young Dawkins there, and think to pluck him; but you shan't,—no, by —— you ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the midst of it, that which was appointed me was done; if well done, what mattered the rest? This quietness came to me through a chain of thought. I had been experiencing, as many others have, the weariness of a long-winded job, the end of which seemed to recede with each day's progress; and there came to my ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... different communities, to have someone with a strong voice who knows just what hymn to sing and when to sing it, who can pitch it in the right key, and who has all the leading lines committed to memory. Sometimes it devolves upon the leader to "sing down" a long-winded or uninteresting speaker. Committing to memory the leading lines of all the Negro spiritual songs is no easy task, for they run up into the hundreds. But the accomplished leader must know them all, because the ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... delighted to be there, notwithstanding the strange silence to which he was condemned, when Dickinson, the bailiff, came in to make his report and to receive his orders. Geoff took the greatest interest in Dickinson's long-winded stories about what was wanted in the village, the cottages that were tumbling to pieces, the things that must be done for the farmers. Lady Markland was at first greatly amused and delighted to see how her boy entered into everything, and even made a gentle ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... characterised by dignity and sobriety, but it rarely rises to passion. He represents to a certain extent a reaction towards the pre-Rossinian school of opera, but, to be frank, most of 'La Juive' is exceedingly long-winded and dull. Besides his serious operas, Halevy wrote works of a lighter cast, which enjoyed popularity in their time. But the prince of opera comique at this time was Auber (1782-1871). Auber began his career as a musician comparatively late in life, but en revanche age seemed powerless ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... my Lord as for tripe, it's my utter aversion, 85 And your bacon I hate like a Turk or a Persian; So there I sat stuck, like a horse in a pound, While the bacon and liver went merrily round. But what vex'd me most was that d—'d Scottish rogue, With his long-winded speeches, his smiles and his brogue; 90 And, 'Madam,' quoth he, 'may this bit be my poison, A prettier dinner I never set eyes on; Pray a slice of your liver, though may I be curs'd, But I've eat of your tripe till I'm ready to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... whether it be cracked or not," said Demosthenes, "so men are proved by their speeches whether they be wise or foolish." Surely the occasional address furnishes a severe test of a speaker's wisdom. To be trivial on a serious occasion, to be funereal at a banquet, to be long-winded ever—these are the marks of non-sense. Some imprudent souls seem to select the most friendly of after-dinner occasions for the explosion of a bomb-shell of dispute. Around the dinner table it is the custom of even political enemies ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... a private interview, which was granted, when I presented the letter of my host at K——, and waited to see the effect of its perusal. I had to wait a long while, for my hospitable friend had indulged in a long-winded account of the whole adventure, which it took a good half-hour to get through. The effect of the narrative was, however, all that I could have desired: the worthy magistrate asked me a few questions, as he was pleased ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... sisters of Virginia, says, "All complimental courtships drest up in critical rarities are meer strangers to them. Plain wit comes nearest to their genius; so that he that intends to court a Maryland girle, must have something more than the tautologies of a long-winded speech to carry on his design, or else he may fall under the contempt of her frown and ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... to listen to the long-winded reminiscences of the "star," so he cut him short at once. He ascertained that the "ingrates" were in New York, on their "uppers," and that they could not accomplish the trip to Crowndale unless railroad tickets were provided. The difficulty was bridged in short order by ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... Mohegans, and several kindred bands, all had their representatives at the meeting. The conferences lasted nineteen days, with the inevitable formalities of such occasions, and the weary repetition of conventional metaphors and long-winded speeches. At length, every difficulty being settled, the Governor of Pennsylvania, in behalf of all the English, rose with a wampum belt in his hand, and addressed the tawny congregation thus: "By this belt we heal your wounds; we remove your grief; we take the hatchet out of your ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... if it was going to be a long-winded job," was Sam's comment, and he heaved a sigh. "I thought we'd come here, march into the cave, and put our hands right on ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... oppresses me. It is all I can do not to yawn in his face when he is telling those long-winded yarns. Poor little Lettice! I wonder what sort of conversation he treats her to when they are alone. I thought she looked very tired yesterday at dinner. Get her all the pretty things she wants for this trousseau, Helen. I must do what I can ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... day he arranged the dreaded interview with Li San down at the mission premises. Gilmour warned me that it would be a long-winded affair, and wished me not to expect his return for a good number of hours. After waiting a long time I went down to see how the interview was progressing. Li San and Gilmour were sitting on the kang, in tailor fashion on each side of a low table, and Li San was singing hymns; but ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... polished, tasteful, clerical contour; attends well to his hair, whiskers, and linen; wears a hat half bishoply and half archidiaconal in its brim; is a good scholar, a clear reasoner, an able-preacher, but repeats himself often, and gets long-winded on Sunday nights; is highly enamelled, touchy, and imperial; is lofty in tone, cream laid and double thick in manner; is full of metal, and there is a stately mystery about him, as if he were a blood relation of the Great Mokanna; he is nearly infallible, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... that she studies negro character, and knows that by stimulating it with little things she promotes good. She studies character while the deacon studies politics. At the same time, she rather ironically reminds Mr. Scranton that the deacon is not guilty of reading any long-winded articles on "state rights and secession." "Not he!" she says, laughingly; "you don't catch him with such cast-iron material in his head. They call him pious-proof now and then, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... jobbed us. There were but three or four of the Cross men there when they voted a strike, and before that there wasn't a man that hadn't taken the floor and fought for your scale. The meeting dragged for some reason, because old Bells kept bringing up arguments—long-winded ones—as ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... respectable gownsmen had left at the door. With a smile of good humour the god look'd at each, For he found that they came from Blunt, Chapman, and Neech.{7} Blunt sent him a treatise of science profound, Showing how rotten eggs were distinguish'd from sound; Some "Remarks on Debates," and some long-winded stories, Of society Whigs, and society Tories; And six sheets and a half of a sage dissertation, On the present most wicked and dull generation. From Chapman came lectures on Monk, and on piety; On Simeon, and learning, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... A long-winded attorney was arguing a technical case before one of the judges of the superior court in a western state. He had rambled on in such a desultory way that it became very difficult to follow his line of thought, and the judge had just yawned ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... who thinks of me as a crude and pushing person, disposed to meddle in the affairs of others, here is where that reader will have his satisfaction and revenge. For if ever a troublesome puppet was jerked suddenly off the stage—if ever a long-winded orator was effectively snuffed out—I was that puppet and that orator. I stop and think—shall I describe how I paced up and down the pier, respectfully but emphatically watched by the secretary? And all the melodramatic plots I conceived, the muffled oars and the ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... still for a moment or two to take breath—we are long-winded, and do not often do it; but still, once in a way, it is unavoidable—and everybody else is whirling and galloping, and prancing round us, like Bacchantes, or tops, or what you will, when, looking toward the door, I catch a glimpse of the three missing young ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... down. We are a little behind time at best this evening, upon account of our young friend's long-winded address. It was a splendid affair, though. Worth waiting to hear, was it not?" proudly inquired the judge as they descended ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... The playwright's mouthing shams, And the long-winded speeches Grow brisk as epigrams. My heart, in sudden clover, With smiles adorns my face, For, when the Act is over, I need not keep my place. I'll chase my fears, like foxes, When next the curtain falls— I'll then be in the boxes, Though now I'm ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... if the truth must be told, the conversation of country people, generally speaking, and an occasional, very occasional, character or oddity apart, is undeniably dull, and I hope it will not be imputed to me for hardness of heart that, after some long-winded colloquy or endless reminiscence, sententious and trivial, I have thought that Gray's famous line should really have been written—"the long and ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... Latin and Greek; and you must lie with her in those languages too, if you will please her. If precise, you must feast all the silenced brethren, once in three days; salute the sisters; entertain the whole family, or wood of them; and hear long-winded exercises, singings and catechisings, which you are not given to, and yet must give for: to please the zealous matron your wife, who for the holy cause, will cozen you, over and above. You begin to sweat, sir! but this is not half, i'faith: you may do your pleasure, ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... is any to be had, and after eating pipes are lighted and the subject for discussion is approached, conversation gradually drifting in that direction. Esquimaux never do anything in a hurry, and these long-winded roundabout chats are exceedingly congenial to their tastes. So imbued do they become with this idea that even "Joe," notwithstanding his long residence with civilized people, could not shake ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... "have you heard from your papa? when's he coming home? You'll try and be a good boy, won't you? You must think how it would vex your dear ma; and you won't give Doctor Palmer cause to cane you again, I know," and Miss Parker smoothed her apron, and took breath after her long-winded oration. ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... would be likely to end by silencing that fellow and his gang. It is monstrous that, upon the only day in the week we have to ourselves, we should be compelled to undergo the punishment of listening to these long-winded divines." ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... should he undergo this, he, Crosbie of Sebright's, Crosbie of the General Committee Office, Crosbie who would allow no one to bore him between Charing Cross and the far end of Bayswater,—why should he listen to the long-winded stories of such a one as Squire Dale? If, indeed, the squire intended to be liberal to his niece, then it might be very well. But as yet the squire had given no sign of such intention, and Crosbie was angry with himself in that he had ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... special constituency. Every speech was good, without exception; with the queerest oddities of phrase and pronunciation, there was an invariable enthusiasm, a pungency of statement, and an understanding of the points at issue, which made them all rather thrilling. Those long-winded slaves in "Among the Pines" seemed rather fictitious and literary in comparison. The most eloquent, perhaps, was Corporal Prince Lambkin, just arrived from Fernandina, who evidently had a previous reputation among them. His historical references ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various |
