"Prosy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... restlessness. It was as much as he could do to sit still, listening first to the Prefect's political and 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 ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... permitted, in bringing some quaint, old-fashioned little body, before a gathering of your more fastidious friends, at once to reconcile them to his or her strange, ungainly mien, and to justify yourself for acknowledging an intimacy with so eccentric a creature, by following up the prosy and unsuggestive: "Mr. B——, ladies and gentlemen," or "Miss M——, ladies and gentlemen," with such a refreshing paraphrase as, "brother-in-law of the celebrated Lord Marmaduke Pulsifer," or, "confidential companion, to the wife of the late distinguished Christopher Quill the American ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... so to speak, drew up all his facts and figures in the form of a hollow square, Tyson charged with magnificent contempt of danger. No doubt Tyson's method was extremely amusing and effective, and his sparkling periods proved the enemy's dullness up to the hilt; unfortunately, the prosy but responsible representations of Smedley had more ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... was. Shakespeare did not sit down and cry for the water of Helicon to turn the wheels of his little private mill at the Bankside. He appears to have gone more quietly about his business than any other playwright in London, to have drawn off what water-power he needed from the great prosy current of affairs that flows alike for all and in spite of all, to have ground for the public what grist they wanted, coarse or fine, and it seems a mere piece of luck that the smooth stream of his activity reflected with such ravishing clearness every changing mood of heaven and earth, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... man in bed. Had he done this artistic bit of acting for the purpose of spending his Christmas on the flat of his back talking to a prosy old doctor? He lay still, trying to think what answer could be made to this physician who told him seriously that he had appendicitis. ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... wait until the end of his speech; I am, therefore, unable to say whether his proposal was carried. The Club de la Delivrance is by far the most reputable public assembly in Paris. Those who take part in its proceedings are intensely respectable, and as intensely dull and prosy. The suppression of gas has been a heavy blow to the clubs. The Parisians like gas as much as lazzaroni like sunshine. The grandest bursts of patriotic eloquence find no response from an audience who listen to them beneath half-a-dozen petroleum lamps. It is somewhat singular, ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... by, doubtless bearing a few belated workers homeward. The stark incongruity of the thing was appalling. How little those weary toilers, hemmed about with the commonplace, suspected that almost within sight from the car windows, amid prosy benches, iron railings, and unromantic, flickering lamps, two fellow-men moved upon the border of ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... not know! My curiosity was unsatisfied; but, perhaps, I went to bed that night with a fuller gush of happiness at my heart than if I had heard this prosy fellow's account of the matter. It is a frequent subject of meditation with me, whether or not I am constituted as other men are. Are others played upon in this way by some slight occurrence—by meeting with a face seen before only in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... the journal must treat of subjects in the most popular manner, avoiding, as far as is consistent with the dignity of the object in view, very elaborate and prosy disquisitions. I shall endeavor to get a circular out next week. Meantime accept my thanks for the interest you take in the subject, and be assured that if I succeed in starting the journal, I shall, at all times, be grateful ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... and again that Tyndall was the greatest teacher he ever knew or heard of, inspiring the pupil to discover for himself, to do, to become, rather than imparting prosy facts of doubtful pith and moment. But Herbert Spencer, not being eligible to join a university club himself, was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... poet, not in the reader. It must be confessed that Wordsworth is not always melodious; that he is seldom graceful, and only occasionally inspired. When he is inspired, few poets can be compared with him; at other times the bulk of his verse is so wooden and prosy that we wonder how a poet could have written it. Moreover he is absolutely without humor, and so he often fails to see the small step that separates the sublime from the ridiculous. In no other way can we explain ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... not have been to Prospero's advantage to have the King killed, since Ferdinand would then succeed to the throne of Naples? Did Ariel's intervention kill the plot? What light is thrown on the characters by scene i. of this act? Do you think it is intended to be shown that Gonzalo is prosy and tiresome, although good, or only that the lower and more frivolous characters find him so? Which is the likelier, that Shakespeare intended the dialogue about Gonzalo's ideal commonwealth to be a satire upon it, or favorable to Utopian schemes? Which comes ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... pleasure of making new visionary acquaintances. If this be so, what an argument it is in favour of reading the best books first and earliest in youth! Do the ladies who now find Scott slow, and Miss Austen dull, and Dickens vulgar, and Thackeray prosy, and Fielding and Richardson impossible, come to this belief because they began early with the volumes of the circulating library? Are their memories happily stored with the words and deeds of modern fictitious romps, and passionate governesses, ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... had flattered Miss Caroline into producing, and fallen fast asleep during her sister's cavatina; and if his conversation, however easy and smooth, had not been felt to be upon the whole rather vapid and prosy. "Just exactly," said young Edward Dunbar, who, in the migration transit between Eton, which he had left at Easter, and Oxford, which he was to enter at Michaelmas, was plentifully imbued with the aristocratic prejudices common ...
— The London Visitor • Mary Russell Mitford
... bothersome that Gard contemplated leaving the neighborhood. Even the Buchers, truest of prosy Germans, could grasp the ridiculousness of this situation, and it was the one item of noisy fun they could fall back upon when they wished to be ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... which we shall find later in a drawing in the Berlin Gallery. From the pronounced way in which his father's hand rests on little Hans' head, while the left points him out,—and even his elder brother "Prosy" shows by his attitude the special notice to be taken of Hans,—it is clear that if this is a portrait-group either it was painted when the boys were actually older, or the younger had already given some astonishing proof ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... for the amusements and seductive gayeties of social life, but she got none. The only society she knew was the prosy men-folk whom Socrates used to fetch home with him occasionally. Xanthippe grew to hate them, and we don't blame her. Just imagine that dirty old Diogenes lolling around on the furniture, and expressing his preference for a tub; picking his teeth with his jack-knife, and smoking his ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... closer glimpse of his triumph. No other incentive would have taken him so close to that prosy bulletin board. He had vaulted over it but never read it. But now in the moment of supreme victory he limped forward, like an elated artist, ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... declared the Marquis emphatically, "With all my heart I wish to make the delicious pink and white Sylvie happy,—I am sure I could succeed in my way. If I should ever allow myself to do such a dull thing as to marry,— imagine it!—such a dull and altogether prosy thing!—my gardener did it yesterday;—I should of course choose a person with a knowledge of housekeeping and small details,—her happiness it would be quite unnecessary to consider. The maintenance of the establishment, the servants, and the ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... "you know I never can remember poetry, Mrs. Merryweather. I shall have to take to 'Mother Goose.' I know I am terribly prosy—well, prosaic, then, Margaret; what's the difference? But I can't think ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... is not read or recited; impromptu keeps its original sense, denoting something that springs from the instant; the impromptu utterance is generally brief, direct, and vigorous; the extemporaneous speech may chance to be prosy. Offhand is still more emphatic as to the readiness and freedom of the utterance. Unpremeditated is graver and more formal, denoting absolute want of preparation, but is rather too heavy a word to be applied to such apt, ready utterance as ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... quite a book now myself. Already I began to feel quite a hardened pioneer. It doesn't take an adaptable person long to accustom one's self to a new way of life, and the humdrum routine of the farm certainly looked prosy compared to voyaging with Parnassus. When I had got beyond Woodbridge, and had crossed the river, I would begin to sell books in earnest. Also I would buy a notebook and jot down my experiences. I had heard of bookselling as a profession ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... my old friend, I grow prosy, and you tire; Fill the glasses while I bend To prod up the failing fire. . . . You are restless:—I presume There's a dampness in the room.— Much of warmth our nature begs, With rheumatics in our ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... JAMES, I've done, thank'God, with the long yarns Of the most prosy of ApostlesPaul,1 And now advance, sweet heathen of Monkbarns, Step out, old quizz, as ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... meeting with rowdies, and himself occupied a seat on the platform. Some remark by Mr. Garrison, the first speaker, provoked a demonstration of hostility. When this was finally quelled by a promise to permit one of the Rynders party to reply, Mr. Garrison finished his speech. He was followed by a prosy individual, who branded the negro as brother to the monkey. Douglass, perceiving that the speaker was wearying even his own friends, intervened at an opportune moment, captured the audience by a timely display of wit, and then ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... criticism, it occurs to me how important it is that a poet, or any other writer, should be a critic of himself. Wordsworth, who was a really great poet, was great only at rare intervals. His habitual mood was dull and prosy. His sin was that he kept on writing during those moods, grinding out sonnets by the hundred—one hundred and thirty-two ecclesiastical sonnets, and over half as many on liberty, all very dull and ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... he was a prosy, weak-minded creature, who, although time was so precious, would have stood talking to me of its great value by the hour, if I had patience to listen. I thanked him for his offer, but assured him I would pay his usual price for ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... his despondency, while Mr. Surplice, who was getting a little prosy as a preacher, was as full of fire as in his younger days. Mr. Capias was so eloquent that the people stamped till the house fairly shook with applause. He ended with resolutions, pledging the support of the people of New Hope to the government,—their ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... dullness of the Dean, and the prosing of the Chancellor, Rose thought to herself; as she glanced about. Arthur whispered that the Chancellor surpassed himself on the occasion, and that even the Dean was not very prosy, and Rose did not dissent, but she looked as if it was all a weariness to her? She brightened a little when it was all over, and ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... a ghoul in it. I can't get the story from Mustapha, who is ashamed of such superstitions, but I'll find it out. We had a fantasia at Mustapha's for young Strutt and Co., and a very good dancing-girl. Some dear old prosy English people made me laugh so. The lady wondered how the women here could wear clothes 'so different from English females—poor things!' but they were not malveillants, only pitying and wonderstruck—nothing astonished them ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... that snuffy, tiresome, prosy professor? How can you talk such nonsense? I am sure the author must be young; there is ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... of London. The depreciation of the rival fabrics is exquisite; and Dryden, the most English of our poets, would not be so thoroughly English if he had not in him some fibre of la nation boutiquiere. Let us now see how he succeeds in attempting to infuse science (the most obstinately prosy material) with poetry. Speaking of "a more exact knowledge of the longitudes," as he explains in a note, he tells ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... a polyhedric Peter, or a Peter with many sides. He changes colours like a chameleon, and his coat like a snake. He is a Proteus of a Peter. He was at first sublime, pathetic, impressive, profound; then dull; then prosy and dull; and now dull—oh so very dull! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... risk of being dull and prosy, I am going to tell a story that is not especially humorous or pathetic, but merely true. Every Christmas I try to tell a true story. I do not want the day to go by without some sort of recognition by which to distinguish it from ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... fellow-citizens, laugh on," said Hugh; "these are the last strawberries of the season, and I have no inclination to discuss anything at present but their sweetness. But I will venture to assert that at six o'clock this evening I shall have imbibed more knowledge in that very hammock then any of you in your prosy chairs." ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... moonshine Bessie lost sight of the phantom poplars that fringe the Orne. The excitement of novelty and uncertainty routed dull thoughts, and her fancy pruned its wings for a flight into the future. In the twilight came Mrs. Betts, and cut short the flight of fancy with prosy suggestions of early retirement to rest. It was easy to retire, but not so easy to sleep. Bessie's mind was astir. It became retrospective. She went over the terrors of her first coming to Caen, the dinner at Thunby's, ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... naturally interested during my lecture in England in the chairmen who were to introduce me. I cannot help but feel that I have acquired a fine taste in chair men. I know them just as other experts know old furniture and Pekinese dogs. The witty chairman, the prosy chairman, the solemn chairman,—I know them all. As soon as I shake hands with the chairman in the Committee room I can tell exactly ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... it. The money will be ready; but of course, when that time comes, you will let me have the hundred and thirty for—" And then Mr. Sowerby took his leave, having certainly made himself master of the occasion. If a man of fifty have his wits about him, and be not too prosy, he can generally make himself master of the occasion, when his companions are under thirty. Robarts did not stay at the Albany long after him, but took his leave, having received some assurances of Lord Lufton's regret for what had passed and many promises of his friendship for the future. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... our old-fashioned politeness. "Anything which concerns the welfare, the progress, if one may so phrase it—" "Stop," said the visitor. "You talk too much. You're prosy. Don't talk. Listen to me. Try and fix your mind on what I ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... great admiration for Plunket's abilities, and would not listen to any disparagement of them. One day while Plunket was speaking at the Bar a friend said to Bushe, "Well, if it was not for the eloquence, I'd as soon listen to ——," who was a very prosy speaker. "No doubt," replied Bushe, "just as the Connaught man said, ''Pon my conscience if it was not for the malt and the hops, I'd as soon drink ditch ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... stuffy hall, A prosy speaker, such a duffer, A mob that loves to stamp and bawl, Noise, suffocation—how ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... undertaking. As an observer of these things, we cannot withhold expressing our opinions upon any part of the system which, in honest thought, appears imperfect, or not so happily directed as it might be. But should PUNCH become prosy, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various
... a horribly prosy, matter-of-fact affair life would be in any other view! I believe ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... made between human beings otherwise equal. He had a democratic philosophy which is sometimes that of Mr. Micawber, "Celui-la est riche qui recoit plus qu'il ne consume; celui-la est pauvre dont la depense excede la recette," But he is seldom so prosy as this. Let us think of him as one who wished to turn his talent as a painter of still life to the benefit of his nation, and who succeeded in a degree far beyond ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... need one ten times the size, but we don't. Nature has seen to that. Yet tonight, when I was particularly anxious to get on with some important domestic legislation, we had to sit and listen to hours of prosy military talk, the possibilities of this and that. They don't realise, these brain-fogged ex-military men, that we are living in days of common sense. Before many years have passed, war will belong to ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... news in his morning paper. It was his custom to seize the journals the moment they arrived, and read to Dora at the breakfast-table all war news of vital interest—and a good deal more that was prosy, and only interesting to a soldier. By chance, he saw the story of Dick's death before his daughter came upon the scene, and was discreet enough not to mention the matter. Since Dora's refusal of Ormsby, he was fairly certain as to the nature of his ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... there's something in you after all," said Cupid to her that night. "Anyhow, you know now what it is to be true, yet not dull and prosy." ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... rector of a parish adjoining Overdene. He had often inflicted wearisome conversations upon her; and when he called, intending to put the momentous question, Jane, who was sitting at her writing-table in the Overdene drawing-room, did not see any occasion to move from it. If the rector became too prosy, she could surreptitiously finish a few notes. He sank into a deep arm-chair close to the writing-table, crossed his somewhat bandy legs one over the other, made the tips of his fingers meet with unctuous accuracy, and intoned the opening sentences of his proposition. ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... contents in front of this little foreword, I am quite sure that few will pause to consider my prosy effort. Nor can I blame any readers who jump over my head, when they may sit beside kind old Baucis, and drink out of her miraculous milk-pitcher, and hear noble Philemon talk; or join hands with ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... a Virginian who has written some interesting stories, and who steadily improves upon himself.... This is a thoughtful, semi-philosophical story. There is much discussion in it, but none of it is prosy."—New ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... Lady Novelists are a genus with many species, determined by the particular quality of silliness that predominates in them—the frothy, the prosy, the pious, or the pedantic. But it is a mixture of all these—a composite order of feminine fatuity—that produces the largest class of such novels, which we shall distinguish as the mind-and-millinery species. The heroine is usually ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... in every respect, such an inferior creature to the Indian—he was so vulgar, so ugly, so cringing, and so prosy—that he is quite unworthy of being reported, at any length, in these pages. The substance of what he had to tell me may be ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... book does not lack ingenuity, and as an example of the familiar belief that other peoples will shut their eyes and swallow whatever opinions the Teuton thinks good to offer them, it may have interest for the psychologist. For the rest it is a very prosy piece of literature, only saved occasionally in its dulness by the unconscious crudity of the hatreds lurking beneath its mask of plausibility. One of these hatreds is clearly directed against Ambassador GERARD, to whose well-known book this volume is in some sort a counter- blast. Neither a historian ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... battle stories and battle books that are not stories that will live far into the piping times of peace because they are human documents or have the stamp of genius. These attractions are not present in Battle Days, which in truth is rather a prosy affair, though ambitious withal. It is not fiction in the ordinary sense. Mr. FETTERLESS essays to conduct the reader through every phase of a big "Push." Pushes were complicated affairs, and the author does not spare us many of the complications. And unless the reader happens to be an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... evening meeting of a scientific club, which was to be held at the house of a distinguished member. I was very reluctant to ask him to be present, for I knew he could be easily bored, and I was fearful that a prosy essay or geological speech might ensue, and I knew he would be exasperated with me, even although I were the innocent cause of his affliction. My worst fears were realized. We had hardly got seated, before a dull, bilious-looking old gentleman rose, and applied his auger with such pertinacity ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... therefore, later than usual—after the rest of the family; and at this meal pour lui soulager he ordered the luxury of a muffin. Now it so chanced that he had only finished half the muffin, and drunk one cup of tea, when he was called into the shop by a customer of great importance—a prosy old lady, who always gave her orders with remarkable precision, and who valued herself on a character for affability, which she maintained by never buying a penny riband without asking the shopman how ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... prosy as Mary, Ethel. At any rate, the woman told Leonard yours was the most irresistibly attractive countenance she ever saw, short of beauty; and that's not the best of it, for ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... enough tenuity to convey sounds. Everywhere on the surface of the glassy stream were visible undulations of heat, and the light steam of evaporation lay along the sluggish water and hung like a veil between the eye and the bank. Seated in an armchair and overcome by the heat and the droning of some prosy passengers near by, I fell asleep. When I awoke the guards were crowded with passengers in a high state of excitement, pointing and craning shoreward. Looking in the same direction I saw, through the haze, the sharp outlines of a city in gray silhouette. Roofs, spires, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... schools do not give education; they give instruction. And it is so very easy to instruct, and so very easy to go on talking, and so very easy to whack Tommy when he does not listen. Our prosy lectures are wasted time. The children would be better ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... perfectly natural. Why, you wouldn't expect her to sit around under the trees, and read poetry with her own husband, would you? We have been married far too long for that, Patricia and I. She thinks me rather prosy and stupid at times, poor girl, because—well, because, in point of fact, I am. But, at the bottom of her heart—Oh, it's preposterous! We are the best friends in the world, I tell you! It is simply that she and Jack have a ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... profound and interesting annotations which are pencilled by sempstresses and apothecaries' boys on the dog-eared margins of novels borrowed from circulating libraries; " How beautiful!" "Cursed prosy!" "I don't like Sir Reginald Malcolm at all." "I think Pelham is a sad dandy." Mr. Croker is perpetually stopping us in our progress through the most delightful narrative in the language, to observe that really Dr. Johnson was very rude, that he talked more ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... refreshing in a sailor's yarn. I have listened to hundreds in the course of my consular career, and have yet to find one that is dull or prosy. They all bear the imprint of truth, perhaps a trifle overdrawn, but nevertheless sparkling with the salt of the sea and redolent of the romance of strange people and distant lands. In listening, one becomes almost dizzy at the rapidity with which the scene and personnel change. The ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... on the farmer's life in a prosy Crabbe-like manner; and here it may be noted that as a rule Bloomfield no sooner attempts to rise to a general view than he grows flat; and in like manner he usually fails when he attempts wide prospects and large effects. He is at his best only when describing scenes and incidents ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... silver vase, as our governor had been, but with a silver currycomb, in testimony of their admiration for his skill; but I confess that the poetry of rubbing down had become, as all other poetry becomes, rather prosy by frequent repetition, and with respect to the chance of deriving glory from the employment, I entertained, in the event of my determining to stay, very slight hope of ever attaining skill in the ostler art sufficient to induce sporting people to bestow upon ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... accoutrements for that noble little army, (standing army we call it!) on which the State prides itself not a little, and spends no end of money. For ourselves, (if the reader but permit us,) we have long admired this little Spartan force, saying all the good things of it our prosy brain could invent, and in the kindest manner recommending its uniform good character as a model for our very respectable society to fashion after. Indeed, we have, in the very best nature of a modern ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... disgusting specimen of nautical morality I had met with in Captain Turner, it will not be considered surprising if my views of a sailor's life had been a little changed during my last voyage. I entertained some doubts whether "going to sea," instead of being all poetry and romance, was not rather a PROSY affair, after all; and I more than once asked myself if a young man, of correct deportment and industrious habits, who could find some good and respectable business on shore, would not be a consummate fool ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... he repeated inwardly. A drawback indeed. Why could an interesting young organism so seldom be detached from its milieu and enjoyed in isolation? Prosy parents; tiresome, detrimental brothers ... He wondered if she had any idea what they were all like. It might be just as well, however, not ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... imagination brightens, and my conception becomes clearer at every step which I take in his company, although it leads me many a weary mile away from the regular road, and forces me leap hedge and ditch to get back into the route again. If I resist the temptation, as you advise me, my thoughts become prosy, flat, and dull; I write painfully to myself, and under a consciousness of flagging which makes me flag still more; the sunshine with which fancy had invested the incidents, departs from them, and leaves ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... perhaps, you will see a thin pale man, with a very long face, in a suit of shining black, thoughtfully knocking that part of his boot which once had a heel, with an ash stick. He is the man who does the heavy business, such as prosy fathers, virtuous servants, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the town of Buffalo Are prosy men with leaden eyes. Like ants they worry to and fro, (Important men, in Buffalo.) But only twenty miles away A deathless glory is ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... particular word to say, for my mind is heavy, nor that you will find in what I may say anything that will illumine the way, but why should we not talk? What! may a friend not call upon a friend in time of vacancy to listen to his idle babble? O these pestiferous dealers in facts and these prosy philosophers, the world must have surcease from them and wander in the great spaces. To idle together in the sweet fields of the mind—this is companionship, when thoughts come not by bidding, and argument is taboo; to have the mind as open as that of a child for all ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... be something doing!" quoth Frank. "That's the trouble with a crowd of girls. After they have played 'Ring Around the Rosy' and 'London Bridge is Falling Down' they don't know another living thing to do except to sit down and look prim and be prosy. But with boys it's different. There's something doing ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... Park—to-day—come back to me some day and let me tell you all those foolish, trite, tiresome things that I should have told a son of mine. I am so old that you will not take offense—you will not mind listening to me, or forgetting the dull, prosy things I say about the curse of idleness, and the habits of cynical thinking, and the perils of vacant-minded indulgence. You will forgive me—and you will forget me. That will be as ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... there in that desolate Alberta, with no neighbors at all for miles, and then only impossible people. I should think it would drive her mad. I must try to get her on the programme, too. She will at least be interesting, on account of her personality. Most of our speakers are horribly prosy, at least to me, but of course I never listen; I just look to see what they've on and then go straight back to my own thinking. I just thought I'd ask your advice, Teddy dear, before I asked the Committee, and so now I'll go to see Mrs. Trenton, the President. So glad you approve, dear! And ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... apprehension of causal sequence, without admixture of animistic belief and without a sense of dependence on any preternatural intervention in the course of events. Not much is to be said for the beauty, moral excellence, or general worthiness and reputability of such a prosy human nature as these traits imply; and there is little ground of enthusiasm for the manner of collective life that would result from the prevalence of these traits in unmitigated dominance. But that is beside the point. The successful working of a modern industrial community ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... knows. Some say he is going to Greece, others whisper an invasion of Paraguay, and others, of course, say other things; perhaps equally correct. I think he is for Greece. I know he is one of the most extraordinary men I ever met with. I am getting prosy. Good-bye! Write soon. Any fun going on? How is Cynthia? I ought to have written. How is Mrs. Felix Lorraine? She ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... all, better suited to his delicate genius than a wife of unusual gifts would have been. For it is a helpmeet, not another genius, that a man of genius really needs most. The woman who, without being prosy or commonplace and without allowing herself to retrograde in looks or in personal care, can run a household in a systematic, orderly fashion is the greatest blessing that Providence can bestow upon genius. Evidently Cecile was just such a woman. Her tact seems to have been as delicate as her ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... daintiest overmantel's ledge She sets enshrined your prosy platter; Your salt-cellars she stocks with veg- ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... should be short. Aptness and specificness do not require an epitome of the story; and a title like "Why Tom Changed His Opinion of Me," or "What the Rabbit Drive Did for Me" is prosy as well as long. It used to be the custom to make the title of a writing a regular synopsis of the matter contained therein; but modern readers object to being told in advance exactly what is to happen. No ruling concerning the proper length of a short ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... and nobody minded him, but every now and then he came in so apropos that I am morally certain he gets a hint from somebody who watches the course of the conversation, and means through him to have a hand in it and stop any of us when we are getting prosy. But in consequence of That Boy's indiscretion, we were without a check upon our expansiveness, and ran on in the way you have observed and may be disposed ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... she was married in the dress she happened to have on when she ran away,—just an old black walking skirt and plaid shirt-waist. No veil, no trail, and no orange-blossoms, and she had counted on having all three. It was so prosy and commonplace after the grand things ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... kind of stucco. Yet, unfortunately, the plastering art died with the Montezumas, for the most vivid imagination failed to convert this rough coating into the "silver sheen" which so dazzled Cortes's little band. The reader will exclaim, "I can fancy no beauty from so prosy a description. Thatched roofs and dirt floors, ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... hold, is nowadays purely a commercial affair. Burlington House is simply a huge shop, and it is all nonsense to talk for one instant about the encouragement it gives to art, or to take seriously the prosy platitudes which are poured forth year by year at that picture tradesmen's dinner—the Royal Academy Banquet. Women are not invited—women, forsooth, whose works on the walls have done their share towards bringing the shillings to the turnstiles of the Academy. But more ridiculous ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... her imagination, thronged with the fair and famous, suitably attired. Something, perhaps, more homely, more immediately attainable. Some of the women dressed, perhaps, a little dowdily; not all of them young and beautiful. The men wise, perhaps, rather than persistently witty; a few of them prosy, maybe a trifle ponderous; but solid and influential. Mrs. Denton's great empty house in Gower Street? A central situation and near to the tube. Lords and ladies had once ruffled there; trod a measure on its spacious ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... Saturday, they met at the post office on week evenings, occasionally they saw each other for a moment after church on Sunday mornings. Mrs. Fletcher Fosdick could not imagine why her only child cared to attend that stuffy little country church and hear that prosy Kendall minister drone on and on. "I hope, my dear, that I am as punctilious in my religious duties as the average woman, but one Kendall sermon was sufficient for me, thank you. What you see in THAT church to please you, I ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... position except by giving away my slaves to fellows who will use them no better than I, and becoming a slave myself; which, if you please, you shall not catch me doing in a hurry. No, my beloved, I must keep my foot on their necks for your sake as well as for my own. But you do not care about all this prosy stuff. I am consumed with remorse for having bored my darling. You want to know why I am living here like a hermit in a vulgar two-roomed hovel instead of tasting the delights of London society with my ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... as I have done on imaginary topics can judge of the comfort afforded by walking on all-fours, and being grave and dull. I dare say, when the clown of the pantomime escapes from his nightly task of vivacity, it is his special comfort to smoke a pipe and be prosy with some good-natured fellow, the dullest of his acquaintance. I have seen such a tendency in Sir Adam Ferguson, the gayest man I ever knew; and poor Tom Sheridan has complained to me of the fatigue of supporting the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... had time, on the top of my mule for musing upon how melancholy a thing is success. Whilst failure inspirits a man, attainment reads the sad prosy lesson that ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... hardly tripped out of sight, when our prosy synod was honoured by the advent of a real and extraordinary phenomenon. This was nothing less than a half-crazy poetess, who prided herself on speaking in rhyme—and such rhyme, amusing from its very badness. On she was going at a great rate, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... eyes and tongues, and you come to have the same interest in the world that other men have—and why shouldn't you?—then your imagination will not be running away with you, or making angels out of common little persons like myself—how dreadfully prosy and commonplace you have no idea! And I forbid you to allow Willie to stick your hat full of flowers, when you go fishing together; and order you to make that young impudence respectful to you on all ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... prosy thing of four U's,' said Geraldine. 'You are sitting up there, you great fair creature, you, for the poor child to worship and adore, and not reciprocating ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... masculine. She had walked down the steps that led from the piazza betwixt Rich Hilary and Jack Adair, the catches of the season, in full view of the Hammond girl, who was left to waste her sweetness upon prosy old ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... forfend that they should find me out. But what can be done? In brief, I cannot get a brief, and thus I exercise my professional acquirements how I can, proving myself as long-winded, as prosy perhaps, and certainly as lying, as the more ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... is the Sabado de Gloria, the Saturday which ends Lent. We go to the Jesuits' church in the morning to hear the last sermon. Since Thursday at noon, as the organs have been silenced, harps and violins have taken their places. The sermon is long and prosy, and we rejoice that it is the last. Then the service of the day goes on until they come to the "Gloria in excelsis." The organ peals out again, the black curtain—which has hidden the high altar—parts in the middle, and displays a perfect blaze of gold ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... his life had old Isaac Mole led a wandering career, that he found it exceedingly difficult, not to say irksome, to settle down to the prosy existence which ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... World, and may easily be paralleled in the journalism of America. Both Raymond, of the Times, and Bennett, of the Herald, almost live in the editorial function; and the former of these, though now Speaker of the Assembly, will either pen his leaders in his desk, during the utterance of prosy speeches, or in hours stolen from sleep after adjournment. In addition to these, we might quote the caustic language of Mr. Greeley, in reference to some mechanics who had 'struck,' in order to reduce their day's labor (we ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... republic—coolly tolerate, nay, they admire and vindicate, this atrocious system of personal restraint and espionage, are totally unfit for the enjoyment of civil liberty. In conclusion, we can hardly recommend the book before us, further than to say, that its gossip, though often prosy to the verge of twaddle, is also sometimes droll and ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... think this smooth little fair-skinned Lillie is a cold-hearted monster, because her heart does not beat faster at these letters which she does not understand, and which strike her as unnecessarily prolix and prosy? Why should John insist on telling her his feelings and opinions on a vast variety of subjects that she does not care a button for? She doesn't know any thing about ritualism and anti-ritualism; and, what's more, she doesn't care. She hates to hear so much about ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... them of '93, and recollections that were almost personal gave life to the prosy descriptions of the author. At that time the high-roads were covered with soldiers singing the "Marseillaise." At the thresholds of doors women sat sewing canvas to make tents. Sometimes came a wave of men in red caps, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... afraid I am too easy-going." He had never cared to talk about himself, and now he said, "Well, yes, I go along in my old prosy way. It is just like the old schooldays, with half the difficulties gone. Of course the children are not always good, but that makes it the more amusing; and one can see much more easily what they are thinking of and ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... lesson, and the experience was so entirely new to him, that he became more deeply interested than the little learner herself. He went to church on Sunday, and was probably the most attentive listener the rather prosy ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... another claimed their attention. Hildegarde was enjoying herself immensely, and did the honours with ardour, delighted to find that the "college girl" knew all about the things she loved, without being in the least bookish or prosy. ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... can come down to a town and be married, instead of to-day, as we had set on. So that's all right, and don't you worry. Your partner, John Ingalls, is as nice as he can be to me. Why did you not tell me how good looking he was? Maybe you never discovered it—you slow, prosy old Joe! When you wrote to me of that rich find you stumbled on, I was sorry you had picked up a partner; for you always did trust folks too much, and I was afraid you'd be cheated by the stranger you picked up. But I guess that I was wrong, Joe; for he ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... herself on her skill in matching shades and selecting fabrics, and mamma was generally glad of her assistance in all such matters. However, perhaps it was only under-clothing and house-linen, and such things that she was buying. All that was the prosy part of shopping. It was the poetry of it that Hilda loved,—the shimmer of silk and satin, the rich shadows in velvet, the cool, airy fluttering of lawn and muslin and lace. So the girl went on her ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... out, around rocky headlands, among woody mountains, along beautiful beaches and graceful tongues of velvety meadows—all 'neath the shadows of towering, snow-clad peaks, is a delight worth days of travel to experience. It enraptures the artist and enthuses even ordinarily prosy folks. There is no single feature wanting to make of such places as Tacoma, Seattle, and Port Townsend, the most delightful and agreeable watering places in the world. Surrounded by magnificent and picturesque scenery, with beautiful drives and lovely bays for yachting purposes, with splendid ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... is no mean test of a translator's ability—this quick, tense scene, one of the finest in dramatic literature. Foersom did it with conspicuous success. Blom has reduced it to the following prosy stuff: ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... "You dear old prosy, preachy professor!" she exclaimed affectionately, "I have been thinking of it. I've half a mind to try, really. Wouldn't Grace Noir just die?...O ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... Ministry, as many prominent members of the opposition, a bishop or two, a score of deluded, but well-meaning gentlemen, who obstinately adhere to the unfashionable notion, that, where great political powers are enjoyed, there are certain serious duties to the public closely connected therewith, a few prosy and pompous peers who believe that their constant presence is essential to the welfare and prosperity of the kingdom,—such, I think, is a correct classification of the ordinary attendance of noblemen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... you," growled Reade, in a tone of disgust. "You're getting as prosy as that Congressman—-and that's the most insulting thing I can think of to say to ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... that her soul had not been fed, as the carriage rolled away from the marble church; but there was much around her to attract the gaze of one who had never before spent a Sabbath in the city. Her husband was glad to be released from the sound of "the prosy old doctor's essay," and was in quite good humor with himself for his act of self-denial in going to church. So the drive home was quite a pleasant one, though considerably longer ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... not conducive to work. At a dinner of the Washington Correspondents Club his response to the toast, "Women," was pronounced by Schuyler Colfax to be "the best after dinner speech ever made." Certainly it was a refreshing departure from the prosy or clumsy-witted efforts common to that period. He was coming altogether into his own.—[This is the first of Mark Twain's after-dinner speeches to be preserved. The reader will find it complete, as reported next day, in Appendix G, at ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine |
