"Write about" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me; for he moved away from the cabin-door, and called out "Mr. Wallingford—where have you got to, Mr. Wallingford?" He was without his hat, having come on deck half-clad, simply to ascertain how went the night, and it makes me shudder, even now, to write about the blow that fell on his unprotected skull. It would have felled an ox, and it crushed him on the spot. The caution of his murderers prevented his falling, however, for they did not wish to alarm the sleepers below; though the plash ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... they have enjoyed themselves. I feel inclined to apologise for CRIMPTON. On second thoughts, I don't. They do not look like men who write about their adventures in their native newspapers. Ladies do that. A weight is off my mind. The Military Writer goes home. He asks, "Who was that old man who fancied himself so about SHERMAN's March?" "That was General ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... a letter to her sister, declared: "It is perfectly discouraging to try to write you. There is so much to write about that it makes me feel as if it was ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... gunboat was safe, but it was too certain that the unfortunate "Zel" had foundered, and that her crew and the brave young Harry Oliver and his still more youthful companion had perished. Many hearts on board grieved for their loss. I will not say tears were shed, because, however poets may write about the matter, it is my belief that British seamen are not addicted to express their feelings in that way, unless perhaps occasionally a few do so when they become sentimental with a larger amount of grog on board than usual, but even ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... And he wanted to write about men; had some reason for believing he could. He was hoping that his play would open the way to many other things; it looked as though it were going to be ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... than a few glimpses of Mr. Gladstone's participation in the counsels of the eventful months that preceded the outbreak of the war. To Mrs. Gladstone he writes (October 4): 'I can hardly at this moment write about anything else than the Turkish declaration of war. This is a most serious event, and at once raises the question, Are we to go into it? The cabinet meets on Friday, and you must not be surprised at anything that may happen. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... nor of disregard to your admonition; but when my thoughts were distracted with other things, books just begun inclosing me all around, a whole load of books upon my conscience, I could not possibly rise up to the gate of heaven and write about my angels. You know one can't sometimes sit down to the sublunary, occupation of reading Greek, unless one feels free to it. And writing poetry requires a double liberty, and an inclination which ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... fine weather and perplexity, and she announced her departure as imminent. We were at Thursday. She must positively leave on Monday. "No more letters to write about my shortcomings," was Ingram's comment upon this intelligence to Mrs. Wilmot apart. "It's a mistake to have people to stay with you who've known you all their lives. They are for ever at their contrasts: why isn't one still a chubby-faced boy, for instance? ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... and was exceeding desirous of a change of the government, and spake to her father not to bear for ever Herod's injurious treatment of their family, but to anticipate their future hopes, as he safely might; and desired him to write about these matters to Malchus, who was then governor of Arabia, to receive them, and to secure them [from Herod], for that if they went away, and Herod's affairs proved to be as it was likely they would be, by reason of Caesar's enmity to ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... that he was too intimate with the lady to write about her. At any rate with that noble impartiality which distinguishes ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... which are found with these men, and I am obliged in excusing this weakness, to say that in a long and varied experience with them, these traits have been characteristic of those I have met. But it is not my lack of reverence that I intended to write about, it is the contradictory way in which those who are under their charge view this matter. The practical, effective and active irreverence of professing Christians astonishes as much as it puzzles me. They ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... and the other regulation "sights" of Milan—not because I wanted to write about them again, but to see if I had learned anything in twelve years. I afterward visited the great galleries of Rome and Florence for the same purpose. I found I had learned one thing. When I wrote about the Old Masters before, I said ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... day has been all confusion and wretchedness. How can I write about it?—and yet, I must write. Anything is better than brooding over my own ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... be punctilious with me. For we have nothing to write about, except it be how much we all love and honour you; and that you believe already, or else ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... tea-table at Hampton. She seems to have written about the Elizabethan age, because she had read much about it; she seems, on the other hand, to have read a little about the age of Addison, because she had determined to write about it. The consequence is that she has had to describe men and things without having either a correct or a vivid idea of them, and that she has often fallen into errors of a very serious kind. The reputation which Miss Aikin ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... contingency might happen any day; and what should she, Clara, do in that case? She told me no news; she lamented over the possibility of Karl's being summoned upon active service. It was, she said, grausam, schrecklich! It made her almost faint to write about it, and yet she did compose four whole pages in that condition. The barrack, she informed me, was turned into a hospital, and she and "Tante" both worked hard. There was much work—dreadful work to do—such poor groaning fellows to nurse! "Herrgott!" ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... tiger, with glaring eyes and distended jaws, tearing the vitals from the crushed and robbed city, while Tweed and his associates sat enthroned.[1339] "Let's stop those damned pictures," proposed Tweed when he saw it. "I don't care so much what the papers write about me—my constituents can't read; but they ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... vulgar—blinder than ever they draw Love or Fortune—she is only a personified newspaper, trumpeting out all that is extraordinary, without minding whether it is good or bad. She misses the delicate and lovely—I wished they would give us a theme to write about her. I should like to abuse ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Southern girl, who likes YOUNG PEOPLE very much. I am nine years old. I have no sister, and but one brother. My papa is a doctor, and is often from home; so when Buddie and I are at school, mamma is alone. I love to go to school. I have two cats—Muldrow and Dumpie. I will write about our beautiful birds ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and they would not have been if they had not written good English. The thought is essential, but ability to give it clear expression is only less essential. Ability to write well, if the writer has nothing to write about, entitles him to mere derision. But the greatest thought is robbed of an immense proportion of its value if expressed in a mean or obscure manner. Mr. Haseman has such excellent thought that it is a pity to make it a work of irritating labor to find ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... "advanced" publisher, who loved to hear his wares called dangerous, and who walked on air when the reviewers said that such men as he were a curse to Society—as they occasionally did when there was nothing special to write about. ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... know what you are talking about. Well, we don't know what we are talking about either, but we had to write something to fill up with, and girls are the easiest things in the world to write about. ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... I've been told. I'll write you everything, Sally,—letters like diaries, letters like stories, letters like books. Think of all the marvelous things I'll have to write about! Why, Rodney Harrison thinks my letters ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... considers it as a most holy will. And when custom steps in besides, and strengthens this pravity of nature, as has happened by means of impious teachers, then the evil is incurable, and leads astray multitudes to irreparable ruin. Therefore, though it is good to preach and write about penitence, confession, and satisfaction, yet if we stop there, and do not go on to teach faith, such teaching is without doubt deceitful and devilish. For Christ, speaking by His servant John, not only said, "Repent ye," but added, ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther
... what I am going to write about? Do I feel it strongly? Do I know it thoroughly? Do I imagine it clearly? The young contributor had better ask himself all these questions, and as many more like them as he can think of. Perhaps he will end by ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... through it mile after mile is infinite repetition as well as infinite luxuriance. And so in Hinduism. A monograph on one god or one teacher is an interesting study. But if we continue the experiment, different gods and different teachers are found to be much the same. We can write about Vishnuism and Sivaism as if they were different religions and this, though incomplete, is not incorrect. But in their higher phases both show much the same excellences and when degraded both lead to much the same abuses, except ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... it said that "Cervantes sneered Spain's chivalry away?" I know not; and the author of such a line scarcely deserves to be remembered. How the rage for scribbling tempts people at the present day to write about lands and nations of which they know nothing, or worse than nothing. Vaya! It is not from having seen a bull-fight at Seville or Madrid, or having spent a handful of ounces at a posada in either of those places, kept perhaps by a Genoese or a Frenchman, that you are competent to write about such ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... no other, and only know me as her support. I feel that I cannot endure the anguish of corresponding with you, if we are only to correspond. No; if you seek for happiness elsewhere, my letters shall not interrupt your repose. I will be dead to you. I cannot express to you what pain it gives me to write about an eternal separation. You must determine. Examine yourself. But, for God's sake! spare me the anxiety of uncertainty! I may sink under the trial; ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... very little that I can like to write about Italy. Italy is beautiful, worthy to be loved and embraced, not talked about. Yet I remember well that, when afar, I liked to read what was written about her; now, all thought of ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... away from them. Not until separated, had he realized how dear they were to him. He could not bear even to write about all that. And he was homesick for the sight of the farm,—the horses and cows and sheep,—for the sight of Captain. But he must remain where he was; what he had to do must be done quickly—a great duty ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... would beat you out of Parnassus, Mr. Secretary. Remember, you may write about Fairyland, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... "scenes" in Parliament in the few sessions that I have selected to write about in this volume than there were in the rest of the last century put together. This was largely due to the climax of Irish affairs in the House. For effect in debate the English and Scotch Members,—not to speak of the Welsh Representatives,—are failures compared with those Members ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... don't know how to write about it! I can't write about it! My heart goes down like a freight elevator, slowly, sickeningly, even when I think about it. Dinky-Dunk came in and saw me studying a little row of dates written on the wall-paper beside the bedroom window. I pretended ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... said Will smiling. "You see now the danger. Many people say that fishermen are cowardly for not doing more, when the case is that they know the danger, and those who talk and write about it don't. It isn't everybody who has seen the sea-coast in a storm. Shall we ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... To write about these festivals is so pleasant, it brings back so many delightful memories, that I could go on writing for long and long. But there is no use in doing so, as they are all very much alike, with little local differences depending on the enterprise ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... of this Greek idea of fate and self-sacrifice. But Gluck's music was, in Owen's opinion, old-fashioned even at the time it was written—containing beautiful things, of course, but somewhat stiff in the joints, lacking the clear insight and direct expression of Beethoven's. "One man used to write about her very well, and seemed to understand her better than any other. And writing about this performance he says—Now, if I could find you his article." The search proved a long one, but as it was about to be abandoned Owen turned up the cutting he ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... reporter for a newspaper. But he is the last person to write about archaeology. I think there must be ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... of the men who silently (you couldn't hear yourself speak) must have shared that conviction with me. To be left to write about it is not, perhaps, the most enviable fate; but the point is that this impression resumes in its intensity the whole recollection of days and days of desperately dangerous weather. We were then, for reasons which it is not ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... December, the day was clearer, and Henry Yule awoke much refreshed, and in a peculiarly happy and even cheerful frame of mind. He said he felt so comfortable. He spoke of his intended book, and bade his daughter write about the inevitable delay to his publisher: "Go and write to John Murray," were indeed his last words to her. During the morning he saw some friends and relations, but as noon approached his strength flagged, and after a period of unconsciousness, he passed peacefully ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... not want to refer to the awful story except in so far as it is a concrete illustration of what I wish to write about—the power of thought examined with common sense in its relation to the happiness of each individual, and the responsibility of its employment by each individual for the benefit of the community—not from the desire to use this opportunity to ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... The varieties of black walnuts I first experimented with were the Thomas, Ohio, Stabler and Ten Eyck, which were planted by hundreds year after year. If I had not worked on this large scale there would be no reason for me to write about it today as the mortality of these black walnuts was so high that probably none would have lived to induce in me the ambition necessary to support a plan involving lengthy, systematic experimentation. Some of these early trees survive today, however, ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... place on the Monday. On the Tuesday Mrs. Finn received a letter from her husband giving his account of the accident. "As far as I can learn," he said, "Silverbridge will write about it to-morrow." Then he went on to give a by no means good account of the state of the patient. The doctor had declared him to be out of immediate danger, and had set the broken bones. As tidings would be sent on the next day she had better say nothing about the accident to Lady Mary. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... to me to write about everything, for one way and another I've had a good deal to put up with, all because of—girls. And I have to be good-tempered and nice just because they are girls. And besides that, I'm really very fond of them; and they're not bad. But no one who hasn't tried ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... ought to be telegraphed for from another province; he rushed off to the governor to protest that he had no hand in it, begged him not to allow his name on account of old associations to be brought into it, and offered to write about his protest to the proper quarter in Petersburg. Fortunately it all passed over quickly and ended in nothing, but I was surprised at Stepan ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... resulted from the receipt of a friend's letter. Is it very frivolous to write all these letters, on no business whatsoever? What I think is, that one will soon be going into the country, where one hears no music, and sees no pictures, and so one will have nothing to write about. I mean to take down a Thucydides, to feed on: like a whole Parmesan. But at present here I am in London: last night I went to see Acis and Galatea brought out, with Handel's music, and Stanfield's scenery: really the best done thing I have seen for many a year. As I sat alone (alone ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... true what those poet fellows write about love! I used to laugh and call it nonsense; but when it comes to one's own turn, it's the truest thing in the whole world! How do I know? I can't tell you, Evelyn; but I do know. It's just the one certain fact in life. I want you! I'm going to ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... may regain new strength. We all love him from our hearts; but one of us has set on foot a plot to oblige another of us to—ally herself with him, and therefore our good Assessor is now exposed to a secret proceeding, which—but I forget that I was to write about ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... write about the women and girls I see, here in New York, in the camps and towns, on the trains, everywhere. Lenore, the war has thrown them off their balance. I have seen and studied at close hand women of all classes. Believe me, as the boys say, I have thought ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... things are hard to think about—harder yet to write about! The very persons who would send the white soul into arms whose mere touch is a dishonor will be the first to cry out with indignation against that writer as shameless who but utters the truth concerning ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... before me, the ocean cast up on the shore at my feet two famous subjects for Roundabout Papers, and I picked up those waifs, and treasured them away until I could polish them and bring them to market. That scheme is not to be carried out. I can't write about those subjects. And though I cannot write about them, I may surely tell what are the subjects I am ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... well as an agreeable guide to whatever of interest occurs along the entire course of the river. In short, it is a pleasant, well-written, and very handsome book on the pleasantest river an author could have to write about."—Literary Gazette. ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... nature of what is understood as a tale decided that it should be so, it being an indispensable law according to Horace, or rather according to reason and common sense, that one must conform one's self to the nature of the things about which one writes. Now, that I should be permitted to write about these as so many others have done and with success I do not believe it can be doubted; and people cannot condemn me for so doing, without also condemning Ariosto before me and the Ancients before Ariosto. It may be said that I should have done better to have suppressed certain details, or at least ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... later times. In 1590-1630, there was no public excitement about the characters, personalities, and anecdotage of merely literary men, poets, and playwrights, who held no position in public affairs, as Spenser did; or in Court, Society, and War, as Sidney did; who did not write about their own feuds and friendships, like Greene and Nash; who did not expand into prefaces and reminiscences, and satires, like Ben Jonson; who never killed anybody, as Ben did; nor were killed, like Marlowe; nor were involved, like him, in charges of atheism, and ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... Christ, as if Christ and a book about him were the same thing. But this is a commonplace absurdity of what one may call the dedicatory genre, in which writers almost always speak of their book as if there were no difference between the book itself and its subject: thus, if they write about Caesar or Cato, "Caesar and Cato," they say, "prostrate themselves before you;" If about Cicero, "Look," they say, "Cicero addresses you and takes you as patron:" all of which are correctly to be reckoned in the category ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... must hasten; one remains Who well deserves my ablest strains. This is my Alfred—lovely babe A smiling cherub sure art thou, How can I best describe thy charms? How can I write about thee now? Nearly four months have passed away Since thou first saw the light of day; And in that time we've hardly had One tedious night with thee, my lad. By day thy chirruping and smiles Thy own dear mother's heart beguiles, And makes me ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... my dear Stephen, it is only those who half know a thing that write about it. Those who know it thoroughly don't take the trouble. All I know about women, or men either, is a mass of generalities. I plod along, and occasionally lift my eyes and skim the weltering surface of mankind lying between me and the horizon, as ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... to write about?" I retorted. "And you can't have spent five years at a great public school like Kensingtowe without one or two sensational things. Pick them out and let us have them. For whatever the modern theorists say, the main duty ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... motives for things, or he takes it for granted that the motives are never disinterested ones. To say that Thackeray was a cynic because he drew a large number of villains is as untrue as to say Swift was a cynic because he wrote satire. Thackeray wrote about villains because he wished to also write about heroes; Swift was satirical because he had the intelligence to see that his contemporaries were fools when they might have been wise. The cynics are the people of to-day who write books which attribute low motives to every one, which turn love into lust, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... white wreaths floating on the water, the dark blue sky that was bursting into stars, the mysterious outline of the hills, the ravishing perfumes rising from the garden below. "It is like a poem," she thought. "Why does no one write about it? Oh!" with a hard gasp, "if I could—if I could only write!" A meteor shot down the heavens. For the moment it seemed that the fallen star flashed through her brow and lodged, effulgent, in her brain. "I—I—think I could," ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... practice, they wrote an average of 120 words. At the end of forty-five hours of practice, they were writing an average of 680 words in a half hour. This was an increase of speed of 560 per cent. An expert typist can write about 3000 words in a half hour. Such a speed requires much more than forty-five hours practice, and is attained by the best ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... boy next to him what they had to write about, and the reply, "The War, you fool," ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... write about? Diary becoming monotonous; too great a sameness. Hospitals; visits; sick; dying; funerals; ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... the imagination may furnish is equally worth expressing. If you choose to write about something for which imagination supplies the ideas, you may create for yourself such ideas as you wish. Their order of occurrence and their time and place are not determined by outward events, but solely ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... (1709-1784), the lexicographer, was one of the most constant frequenters of the coffee houses of his day. His big, awkward figure was a familiar sight as he went about attended by his satellite, young James Boswell, who was to write about him for the delight of future generations in his marvelous Life of Johnson. The intellectual and moral peculiarities of the man found a natural expression in the coffee house. Johnson was fifty-four and Boswell only twenty-three when the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... that his life has in itself been without interest; that it has been an essentially commonplace life with nothing of the interesting or the eventful to tell. He is frankly surprised that there has ever been the desire to write about him. He really has no idea of how fascinating are the things he has done. His entire life has been of positive interest from the variety of things accomplished and the unexpectedness with ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... it is doubtful whether even Cato himself was quite as economical and efficient, and so as capitalistic in his farming, as he advises others to be: certainly a whole race of contemporary country gentlemen was not equal to it. It is much easier to write about business-like farming than to ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... physician in every community, sooner or later in his experience there come thoughtless women making requests that we even hesitate to write about. Their excuses for the crime which they seek to have the physician join them in committing, range all the way from "I don't want to go to the trouble," to "Doctor, I've got seven children now, and I can't even educate ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... imitated a porpoise without knowing it. "Educated out of books! All any of that rabble rout of his knows is what they read secondhand. They don't know people. Don't know capitalists. Don't even know these wage slaves they write about. That's why they can't stop the war. They may be educated, but you're enlightened. They know more books, but you know more life in a minute than they'll ever know—you got a better idea of the what-for in this world. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... died, as so many others died, of the financial crash which was the inevitable sequel and retribution of speculative madness. Its history resembles the history of other Western towns of the sort so strongly, that I should not take the trouble to write about it, nor ask you to take the trouble to read about it, if the history of the town did not involve also the history of certain human lives—of a tragedy that touched deeply more than one soul. And what is history worth but for its human interest? The history of Athens is not of value on account ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... And write about it, Goddess, and about it; and therefore I have omitted it. When we got home, and were again at table with Dr Johnson, we first talked of portraits. He agreed in thinking them valuable in families. ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... thankful breath! (Note this 'parallel case' of mine is pretty sure to meet the usual fortune of my writings—you will ask what it means—and this it means, or should mean, all of it, instance and reasoning and all,—that I am naturally earnest, in earnest about whatever thing I do, and little able to write about one thing while ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... fair sample of the whole. Abstention might have been due to dislike of publicity, to inertia, or to pure ignorance, none of which would have much affected the values as a sample; but an unquestionably common motive does so seriously—namely, when the person addressed had no noteworthy kinsfolk to write about. On the latter ground the 260 who did not reply would, as a whole, be poorer in noteworthy kinsmen than the 207 who did. The true percentages for the 467 lie between two limits: the upper limit supposes the richness of the 207 to be shared by the 260; the lower limit supposes it ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... rather painful. I do not know why people write about painful things when there are so many pleasant and interesting things to write about. It seems to me ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... me to write about these things that I so much love, for I do not talk of them lest I should be regarded as a person who rhapsodizes, and there is no nuisance more intolerable than having somebody's rhapsodies thrust upon you when you have ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... tutelary object of worship.' An object of worship, of course, is not necessarily a totem! Nor is a totem by the definition (as a rule one of a class of objects) anything but a natural object. Mr. Max Muller wishes that 'those who write about totems and totemism would tell us exactly what they mean by these words.' I have told him, and indicated better sources. I apply the word totemism to the widely diffused savage ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... course I was sorry for Mataafa, but a good deal sorrier and angrier about the mismanagement of all the white officials. I cannot bear to write about that. Manono all destroyed, one house standing in Apolima, the women stripped, the prisoners beaten with whips—and the women's heads taken—all under white auspices. And for upshot and result of so much shame to the white powers—Tamasese ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unreserved people, Balzac in reality revealed very little of himself—in fact, we may often suspect him of using a flow of apparently spontaneous words as a screen to mask some hidden feeling. Therefore, when people who had considered themselves his intimate friends tried to write about him after his death, they found that they really knew little of the essentials of the man, and could only string together amusing anecdotes, proving him to have been eccentric, amusing, and essentially bon camarade, but giving little idea of his ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... in me a desire to write about the war. It was partly I think because what you wrote summed up and drove home other criticisms and appeals of the same kind. I had been putting them mechanically aside as not having any special reference to me; but in reality they had haunted me. And now ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... past grew pale before the red light of the terrible present. Meeting the same author not long afterwards, he confessed that he had laid down his pen at the same time that we had closed his book. He could not write about the sixteenth century any more than we could read about it, while the nineteenth was in the very agony and bloody sweat of ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... than it deserved, and he was himself very proud of it, but he dared not show it at Battersby. He knew also that he was now at the end of his tether; this was his one idea (I feel sure he had caught more than half of it from other people), and now he had not another thing left to write about. He found himself cursed with a small reputation which seemed to him much bigger than it was, and a consciousness that he could never keep it up. Before many days were over he felt his unfortunate essay to be a white elephant to him, which ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... while their master's children sleep on straw; that they eat white bread, and their master's children eat brown. But enclose ten acres with a high wall, plant it with Lombardy poplars and the most beautiful shrubbery, build a magnificent castle in the midst of it, give thee pen, ink, and paper, to write about the political elections in which thou art so much interested, load thee with the best of everything thy heart could desire, still I think thou wouldst want to ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... This subject, and that of the variation of our domestic productions, together with the causes and laws of variation, inheritance, and the intercrossing of plants, are the sole subjects which I have been able to write about in full, so as to use all the materials which I have collected. The Descent of Man took me three years to write, but then, as usual, some of this time was lost by ill-health and some was consumed by preparing new editions and other minor ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... correct the then prevalent errors. More recently, the tide has completely turned, until the danger now imminent is that of extravagant if not groundless exultation, so that this Fair would be treated somewhat differently if I were now to write about it. The truth lies midway between the extremes already indicated. Our share in the Exhibition was creditable to us as a nation not yet a century old, situated three to five thousand miles from London; it embraced many articles of great practical ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... to think of so many things, and moreover, it is improper to write about such problems; they ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... a plumb fool, Ronicky. But I thought it wouldn't do me no harm to unlimber my pen and fire out a few words a day. So I done it. I started writing what they told me to write about, the things that was around me, with a lot of lessons about how you can't use the same word twice on one page, and how terrible bad it is to use too ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... other hand, the archdeacon accepted as his enemy the man whom the new puppet bishop put before him as such, he would have to talk about Mr. Slope, and write about Mr. Slope, and in all matters treat with Mr. Slope, as a being standing, in some degree, on ground similar to his own. He would have to meet Mr. Slope, to—Bah! the idea was sickening. He could not bring himself to have to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... you realize that the fellows at the Naval Academy will make us read aloud to them this yarn you're proposing to write about us—that is, if they happen ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... gardener directions what to do this year (for I intend to have the garden handsome), Sir W. Pen come to me, and did break a business to me about removing his son from Oxford to Cambridge to some private college. I proposed Magdalene, but cannot name a tutor at present; but I shall think and write about it. Thence with him to the Trinity-house to dinner; where Sir Richd. Brown, one of the clerkes of the Council, and who is much concerned against Sir N. Crisp's project of making a great sasse ["Sasse, a sluice, or lock, used in water-works."—BAILEY'S ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... produce opinions and information, but he couldn't meet or answer arguments. And he was cautious, afraid of committing himself, afraid, I fancied, of exposing gulfs in his equipment of information, for, like other journalists of his type, his habit was to write about things of which he knew little. Old Pinkerton remarked once, at a dinner to American newspaper men, that his own idea of a good journalist was a man who could sit down at any moment and write a column on any subject. ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... reminded me of my brother. He got away with it every time! The idea of doing anything, or not doing anything, because it was against the law or custom, never entered his head! Very few people who read Cellini realize that there are men like him now. Every bit. They don't write about themselves, that's all. There will always be a certain number of men of his kidney, a sort of seasoning for the rest of us. They fear nothing and they reverence nothing ... ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... revolting crime and evil is, how they can be overcome and resisted, and how truth and honesty must prevail in the end. The difference between good books and plays and bad ones is not so much the subjects they write about as the way in which they speak of them. Some of the cheap literature is only foolish, some is distinctly wicked, but both are better avoided, and your time and money spent on worthier objects. Avoid bad company, and take care that your ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... animal who is now suffering from the colic tells him everything I do. He swears that it is not so, but I know him to be a liar. Indeed, I am very glad he does write to Ricla, and only wish he had something of real importance to write about." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Memsahibs who know India and can write about it as well as Mrs. ALICE PERRIN, so that when she calls her new book The Happy Hunting Ground (METHUEN) she sets you thinking. And when you begin to think, you see that that really is the meaning of those tearful farewells at Victoria and Charing Cross, that heavy-hearted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... coincidences for which destiny is sometimes responsible, the two very opposite plain men whom I am going to write about were most happily named Mr. Alpha and Mr. Omega; for, owing to a difference of temperament, they stood far apart, at the extreme ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... kitchen with him taking Eppss cocoa and talking of course he pretended to understand it all probably he told him he was out of Trinity college hes very young to be a professor I hope hes not a professor like Goodwin was he was a potent professor of John Jameson they all write about some woman in their poetry well I suppose he wont find many like me where softly sighs of love the light guitar where poetry is in the air the blue sea and the moon shining so beautifully coming back on the nightboat from Tarifa the lighthouse ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... commemorate my husband's brave career in the Civil War, as I was not married until some years after the close of that war, nor to describe the many Indian campaigns in which he took part, nor to write about the achievements of the old Eighth Infantry. I leave all that to the historian. I have given simply the impressions made upon the mind of a young New England woman who left her comfortable home in the early seventies, to follow a second ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... contain a quite faithful account of things that happened under my own eyes throughout the chief stages of the western campaign. During the early part of the war many things happened that were splendid to see and that it gave me great pleasure to write about. During the later stages nothing particularly splendid occurred, though the patience and endurance of our men were in their way fine; but some things happened which were, as we say, regrettable; and these things also are ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... before the ending of the school, that Flaxen first began to write about delaying her return. Anson was wofully disappointed. He had said all along that she would make tracks for home just as soon as school was out, and he had calculated just when she would arrive; and on the second day after the close of school for the summer ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... treaty's true provision. Her Majesty (she grieves to say) 's contrived to get, Like all her predecessors, into debt— In Upper Canada, which, we suppose, By this time is a fact the Council knows, And what they think, or say, or write about it, You'll he advised of, and the Queen don't doubt it, But you'll contrive to make the thing all square, So leaves the matter to your loyal care. GENTLEMEN OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, Her Majesty, I'm proud to say, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... you a billion trillion times for your absolutely divine letter. But I cannot write about all you say, I'm too excited as it is. When can you come? Then we can talk. Oh for another long talk with ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... thing, uncle! You write about it beautifully, even if you're not very virile or epigrammatic or passionate. I won't let you ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... pretty, though not regular, the loops on one side being much larger than those on the other. I would show the picture here, but it is too large. One of these days, it will be given in a book I am going to write about Mars, who is quite important enough to have a book all to himself. I want you, now, to understand me that Mars really does travel in a most complicated path, when you consider the earth as at rest. If a perfect picture of all his ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various |
