"Harping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... always harping on the strings of humanity; striking discordant sounds too. There's no other way by which we can be ourselves safe. If we let him live, he'd be sure to turn up somewhere, and tell a tale that would get ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... each other in the fratricidal days of 1885, even after their attempt in 1905 to found a Customs union had been vetoed, even after some of their so-called intelligentsia had done what injury they could by harping on the limitations from which they naturally, like the older peoples, are not exempt—nevertheless, as it was seen in 1912, when the demonstrations of delight in Belgrade and in Sofia were touching, they are only ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... recognition do we give to corporations that obey the laws, whose operations are above censure and who add immeasurably to the wealth of the country and to the prosperity of every citizen in it? With this constant presentation of depravity, this incessant harping upon the one string of human dishonesty, what wonder that our visions should be distorted or that we should exclude from our horizon almost everything but the sinister features of modern life. What wonder that the young men and women should look at the career before ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson
... me his father insisted on his marrying,—would not hear of his putting it off any longer. Sir Edmund had been harping on this string ever since he came back from Germany, had made it both a general and a particular request, not only urging him to matrimony in the abstract, but pushing him into the arms of every young ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James
... aimless times that thought becomes distorted. Willard felt his mind wandering through bleak dreams and tortured fancies, always to find himself harping on his early argument with Pierre: "It's the mind that counts." Later he roused to the fact that his knees, where they pressed against the bag, were frozen; also his feet were numb and senseless. In his acquired consciousness he knew that along the course of his previous mental vagary ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... magistrate pointed out to the learned gentleman that Lady Eustace had confessed her own false swearing, both at Carlisle and in London, a dozen times. He continued his questions over and over again, harping chiefly on the affair at Carlisle, and saying very little as to the second robbery in Hertford Street. His idea was to make it appear that Lizzie had arranged the robbery with the view of defrauding Mr. Camperdown, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... gleamed ruddily. A merchantman was loading her cargo of pottery crates and oil jars,—to sail with the morning breeze. Swarthy shipmen ran up and down the planks betwixt quay and ship, balancing their heavy jars on their heads as women bear water-pots. From the tavern by the mooring came harping and the clatter of cups, while two women—the worse for wine—ran out to drag the newcomers in to their revel. Phormio slapped the slatterns aside with his staff. In the same fearful waking dream Glaucon saw Phormio demanding ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... as heavy and stalwart as young trees, and through the myriads of arrow-pointed leaves that rustled as they sifted and shifted the gold flakes of sunlight, sounded the low, mysterious harping of wind-fingers as light and yet as profound as ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... always, something made him pause outside Foster's door and listen. All the sounds of the old building seemed to come up to him; not human voices and movements, but the life of the old house itself, the creaking protests of stairways, the sighs of reluctant doors, the harping groans of ill-mannered window- frames, the coughs and wheezes of trembling walls, the shudders ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... ascertained that the brig had received no damage by her salute of the Pot Rock, and every trace of uneasiness on that account was removed. But Spike kept harping on the boat, and "the pilot-looking chap who was in her." As they passed Riker's Island, all hands expected a boat would put off with a pilot, or to demand pilotage; but none came, and the Swash now seemed released from all her present dangers, unless some might still be connected with ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... and creak of bough And rustle of the frost, And winter's inner voice—avow The holy hour is crossed, And far, mysterious music sounds, Sweet like a harping host. ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... the agricultural projects entertained for a moment after the interdiction of Vautrin soon faded from Balzac's mind, which was still harping on the necessity of his conquering the suffrages of the public in his character of dramatist. He now set himself to write a play called Mercadet or the Faiseur,[*] the latter word implying by its meaning the tragi-comedy of a penniless financier—the novelist's own ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... Manuel met El Conejo he listened to the nonsense that the hunchback spoke, with his eternal harping on the Bishop of Madrid-Alcala, and then tried to shift the conversation toward the topic of Senor ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... hearing you have not heard; and you will cease to be able to hear at all; and then the thunders may rattle over your heads, and be inaudible to you; and that Voice which is as loud as the sound of many waters, and sweet as harpers harping on their harps, and which says to each of us, 'Come to Me, and I will be thy peace and thy rest and thy strength,' will no more be audible in your atrophied ears. Dear friends! I do not know, as I have said, whether that ultimate tragic result is ever wholly reached in this world. I ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... friends. Probably telling them, for the thousandth time, that her boy Conn fixed up the sound receptors and voice for Oscar. Or harping on how Conn had been telling everybody the truth, all along, and people ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... ago an organist died in the assured hope that he would be the leader of a heavenly choir. It does not seem far fetched to believe that his ambition is gratified. At this very hour he may be a director of those harpers that are harping upon ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... and Miss Harding have played several games together during the past week, and I assured him that the fact possessed not the slightest interest to me. Chilvers pretends to think it does, and seems to take much delight in harping on ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... the Shepster order, and primed with wine, intercepted her to present their condolences, which they performed with exaggerated gestures, intended for broad mimicry of the courtliness imported from the Continent, and a very dulcet harping on the popular variations of her Christian name, not forgetting her singular title, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and gave such a desponding look. 'Pierce,' he continued, 'will smash the democracy before he has done, by simply making it ridiculous. Thrice have I remonstrated with him in all my power of persuasion; but it has fallen harmless at his feet, for here he is, up again and harping. He singularly argues in his private despatches that Europe being in a fuzzle generally; that England having enough to do at keeping her grumbling people quiet, and fighting her old friend Russia; that Monsieur Napoleon, the very Republican Emperor, having three ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... doin'?" inquired the Force. It was a nuisance, this perpetual harping on trifles when the deep question of the light-weight Championship of the World was under discussion, but the sooner it was attended to, the sooner ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... cling to this vile world! Here I, Whose dust was laid ere I began this carping, By moles and worms and such familiar fry Run through and through, am singing still and harping Of mundane matters—flatting, too, and sharping. I hate the Angel of the Sleeping Cup: So ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... as could possibly be endeavoured, every proof has been crowded into this book in refutation of this favourite allegation of Mr. Froude's. It is only an idle waste of time to be thus harping on his colour topic. No one can deserve to govern simply because he is white, and no one is bound to be subject simply because he is black. The whole of West [191] Indian history, even after the advent of the attorney-class, proves this, in spite ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... are you always harping on that string for? Education isn't everything in the world. Tabitha can get all the learning a woman needs right here ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... and puffing the preparatory pipe,—girds her loins for the evening meal, and makes every one "look alive." When the last rays are shedding their rich red glow over the tall black trees which hem in the village, all torpidity disappears from it. The fires are trimmed, and the singing and harping, which were languid during the hot hours, begin with renewed vigour. The following is a specimen of ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... soiled frock; she thought of the new song her mother was singing, so different from the coarse, low songs that were being sung in the theatre; she thought of the music to which her mother was listening, the voice of harpers harping with their harps, and she thought how different it was from the noisy band close to her, and from the clanging music which her father's company was making. She thought, too, of the words which her mother was saying ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... new state of facts, and that he was the man to remodel it. I had heard a good deal to his prejudice, and did all I could to prevent Mason taking him, into his confidence. We then started back for Monterey. Ricord was along, and night and day he was harping on his scheme; but he disgusted Colonel Mason with his flattery, and, on reaching Monterey, he opened what he called a law-office, but there were neither courts nor clients, so necessity forced him to turn ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... faces of the crowd to see if he could detect any special interest that would denote a rival bidder, and he wished the auctioneer would stop harping on their good qualities. It surprised him a little that he saw none of his own eagerness reflected in the varied expressions, also it relieved him somewhat. If he had had an unlimited bank account it would have been different, but he realized that any determined ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... stopped harping on the point when they reached the monorail station. Three Suspendeds, obviously better educated than most, were being led away by a large group of paraNormals. The paraNormals had their smug expressions back but there was a strange gleam ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner
... celebrations of the past, Page regarded as somewhat unrelated, in style and matter, to the realities of the present. The image-breaking editor even asserted that the Daughters of the Confederacy were not entirely a helpful influence in Southern regeneration; for they, too, were harping always upon the old times and keeping alive sectional antagonisms and hatreds. This he regarded as an unworthy occupation for high-minded Southern women, and he said so, sometimes in language that made him very unpopular in ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... the infantry. Surely they knew as much about the matter as some of the cavalry who had been summoned. There was Mrs. Davies who could expect her husband within the week, while it might be months before they set eyes on theirs. They seemed to take comfort in harping on this theme for Willett's benefit, He sat near Mira's side, as she reclined languidly in her wicker chair, his eyes glowing, his hands and lips twitching at times, listening and occasionally addressing low-toned, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... talked "soldiering" all the evening; and the next morning, when breakfast was nearly over, and Helen ran upstairs to inquire if they meant to lie on till dinner-time, they were still harping away on the same subject. The door was standing ajar, and she heard ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... catch a precious hiding, without you let up harping on that old string; it's way out of ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... sheets should hold, as they did, women's eyes. There were pictures in it—always pictures—pictured embraces, with words beneath. "How beautiful you are! I love you—I love you! How beautiful you are!" Always harping on the same thing—love and beauty. As if life were a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "Still harping, but harping your praises. Century plants are not necessarily old: they are all young at the beginning! I merely meant you'd be ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... kinship with Kjartan, set forth how lovingly Olaf had brought him up. Gudrun answered, "Therein you speak the truth, but you will not have the good luck always to do what pleases all men, and if you cut yourself out of this journey, our married life must be at an end." And through Gudrun's harping on the matter Bolli's mind swelled at all the enmity and guilts that lay at the door of Kjartan, and speedily he donned his weapons, and they grew a band of nine together. There were the five sons of Osvif—Ospak, Helgi, ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... says to me: "My chief here won't lend me nine shillings to buy a sheepskin coat for my old woman, therefore she must be frozen to death in the winter; my chief won't lend me anything, other people he lends." The chief said nothing for a while; but the scribe went on harping on this string, till at last the chief launched out right and left on his scribe, shouting loud enough for all the compound to hear. The scribe took it coolly, and stopped him, saying: "Enough, enough; it is past, ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... oftentimes aught but noble, if all tales be true, was sufficient to endow us with the most splendid of modern books. It is strange to see how that crabbed man with the passionately-loving heart keeps harping on the beneficence of sorrow. Once he spoke of "Sorrow's fire-whips"; but usually his strain is far, far different. He cleaves to the noble and sorrowful figures that crowd his sombre galleries; and I do not know that he ever gives more than a light and careless word of praise ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... hilltop, with no companion but his querulous mother—Mrs Ratcliffe was for ever harping on his folly in suffering his cousin Dorothy, with her full money-bags, to slip through his fingers, to bless the draper's son in the Chepe with what would have been so valuable to him and to her—was far more to be pitied; and it was no wonder that he withdrew more and more into himself, and grew ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... listen to him," said Ignaty in a low voice. "When you hear this sort of thing once, you never forget it, and he keeps harping on ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... you by that?—[Aside.] Still harping on my daughter:—yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very near this. I'll speak to him again.—What do you read, ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the sight begets a sort of coarse sympathy, such as the convict feels for his fellow; an emotion due to the freemasonry of crime. Jupiter takes care to strengthen it, by harping on the cruelty of his master—more than hinting that he would like to leave him, if any other would but buy him. Indeed he'd be willing to run away, if he ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... Friday.—Still harping on Irish Votes. Want to dock Prince ARTHUR'S salary. SWIFT MACNEILL brought down model of battering-ram used at Falcarragh; holds it up; shows it in working order; Committee much interested; inclined to encourage this sort of thing; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... thickset forest I hear a sound go free, Crashing the stately neighbours The pine and the cedar tree, Horns and harps and tabors, Drumming and harping and horning In savage minstrelsy— It wakes in my soul a warning Of the wind ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... deep into his trousers' pockets and walked away before he could be betrayed into deeper deceit. It did seem to him rather hard that, merely because he had wanted the roan badly enough to—er—exercise a little diplomacy in order to get him, they should keep harping on the subject like that. And to have Coleman making medicine to get the roan into that contest was, to say the least, sickening. Andy's private belief was that a twelve-year-old girl could go round up the milk-cows ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... change, while the Quakers might still have an influence in the Legislature, the Crown would probably give the executive offices to Churchmen. They therefore labored hard to discredit the Quakers. They kept harping on the absurdity of a set of fanatics attempting to govern a colony without a militia and without administering oaths of office or using oaths in judicial proceedings. How could any one's life be safe ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... harping on gratitude which at one time was the only safe tone for pulpit, press and public speech; it irritating because it ignored questions of current policy, and it was discouraging to the Filipinos who were reminded by it of the hopeless future for their country to which time had brought no progress. ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... favour, and Your name renowned to all following generations. And if these unhappy commotions and divisions shall end in this peace and unity; then it shall appeare in the Providence of God, they were but the noyse of many waters, and the voyce of a great thunder before the voyce of harpers harping with their harps, which shall fill this whole Iland with melodie and mirth, and the name of it shall be, ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... prompt alacrity; nor shall, I judge, Courage be wanting to our utmost force. Thus then replied Ulysses, ever-wise. 150 To me the safest counsel and the best Seems this. First wash yourselves, and put ye on Your tunics; bid ye, next, the maidens take Their best attire, and let the bard divine Harping melodious play a sportive dance, That, whether passenger or neighbour near, All may imagine nuptials held within. So shall not loud report that we have slain All those, alarm the city, till we gain Our woods and fields, where, once arriv'd, such plans 160 We will devise, as Jove shall ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... the 4th of August, M. de Nion received an answer, and not an acceptable one, to his last note, still harping on "the punishment of the general." We had had enough of that sort of thing. On the 5th a despatch-boat brought me news of the safety of Mr. Hay, the British Plenipotentiary, on board an English ship, and ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... cried Carew, angrily. "Still harping on that same old string? Why, from thy waking face I thought thou hadst dropped it long ago. Let thee go? Not for all the wealth in Lombard street! Dost think me a goose-witted gull?—and dost ask what I have done for thee? Thou simpleton! I have made thee ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... on didacticism were especially valuable. His strength as a critic lay in his artistic temperament and in the incisive intellect that enabled him to analyze the effects produced in his own creations and in those of others. His weaknesses were extravagance; a mania for harping on plagiarism; lack of spiritual insight, broad sympathies, and profound scholarship; and, in general, the narrow range of his genius, which has already been made sufficiently clear. His severity has been exaggerated, as ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... all right if the parrot don't die," said the dainty pessimist, still harping on his pet theme. "All that bread ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... In Dr. Starbuck's collection of cases, seventy-five per cent. of the males and sixty per cent. of the females confessed to feelings of depression, anxiety, and sadness before conversion. This may be attributed partly to the harping upon a conviction of sinfulness, which in itself is wholly of an unhealthy character. It does not indicate moral health, and it is very far from indicating physiological health. The following confessions are pertinent, and will illustrate both points. I give in brackets the ages of the ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... Even Lemuel Squires' harping cross questions did not rouse Jeffrey to any attention to the story that he had told. At each question he went back to the point indicated and repeated his recital dully and evenly without any thought of what the District Attorney ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... bracing, but my liver is out of order, and I shall be glad enough to get back to town. I cannot say much for June, her health and spirits are very indifferent, and I don't see what is to come of it. She says nothing, but it is clear that she is harping on this engagement, which is an engagement and no engagement, and—goodness knows what. I have grave doubts whether she ought to be allowed to return to London in the present state of affairs, but she is so self-willed that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... there's the grand difficulty. For I find that when you do wake up, you are more troublesome than ever. Then you are always harping upon my being a professor of religion, and bringing up some text of Scripture, which might as well be let alone, and which you would not ring in my ears, if you had any regard to my peace, or even your own. More than fifty times, within ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... literis, what happens in every place of the kingdom every hour in the year, and fastening always on the worst as the most palatable morsels. But she is a circumstantial old lady, communicative, scrupulous, leaving nothing to the imagination, harping on the smallest grievances, a village-oracle and critic, most veritable, most identical, bringing us acquainted with persons and things just as they chanced to exist, and giving us a local interest in all she knows and tells. Mr. Crabbe's Helicon is choked up with weeds and corruption; ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... the Leaves. Do let the Leaves alone. Mother is always harping on them, and bringing them up to me. But the fact is, they are afraid to come here. They have been invited scores of times; but they always make excuses at the last moment. I know the reason, for that ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... of your life, Jasper. How came you by such a mauling? Let the tale of it be like David's harping and ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... was melted at Tristram's minstrelsy, and he said: "That is wonderful harping. Now ask what thou wilt of me, and it shall be thine, ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... are dotards, who believe And glory in the days of old; While some are dreamers, harping still Upon an unknown age ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... always harping on "Lorraine's influence." If they wanted their dear Charles Edward made different from the way he is, why on earth didn't they do it themselves, when they had the chance? That's what I want to know! I know they mean to be nice to me, but they take it for granted that every habit Charles Edward ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... look after ornamental gardens and south aspics and all, I ought to have my salary raised," said James, still harping on his one grievance. ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... to such a mortification. I certainly am sorry to have done so. As for her ladyship's answer, it would have been to me more a subject of mirth than any other feeling. It has, however, proved the cause of much annoyance from my mother's continually harping upon it." ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... Gale felt the hard, cold tone of his crusty relative, and answered with like harshness: "What do you keep harping on that for? You've got my word. All I want of you is ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... you old fool?" she exclaimed, indignantly. "What do you mean by referring to such a subject as that, on this day, of all others? You are always harping on those two wretched people who were guillotined, as if you thought I could have saved their lives. Were you not present when my son and I met, after the time of the Terror? Did you not hear my first words ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... you by that? Still harping on my daughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said [Sidenote: a sayd I] I was a Fishmonger: he is farre gone, farre gone: [Sidenote: Fishmonger, a is farre gone, and truly] and truly in my youth, I suffred much extreamity and truly for loue: very neere ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... to me, with apparently the most perfect simplicity, 'Why do you keep saying so much about the slaves? Do you imagine that there is one among your hearers who does not agree with you? We all know that Slavery is very wrong. What, is the use of harping upon this subject Sunday after Sunday? We all feel about it just as you do.' 'Feel about it just as I do,' Very likely, my friends. It is very possible that you all feel as much, and that many of you feel about it more than I do. God knows that my regret ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... their sight A globe of circular light, That with long beams the shame-faced Night arrayed. The helmed Cherubim, And sworded Seraphim, Are seen, in glittering ranks with wings displayed, Harping, in loud and solemn quire, With unexpressive notes ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... and the nest of jays, her maids of honour, were not enough for the penance of an unhappy sinner for the space of a calendar year!"—cried he, still harping upon the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... was ready to take her advice, if that was the only way to make her easy in her mind. "I know what you mean, now," added he: "you are still harping upon the lottery ticket. Well, I'll buy a ticket this day week, after I've sold the cow I bought at the fair. Will you have done ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... would not quarrel with Dr Thorne, and of course he did not do so. But he, himself, had no wish whatever that his son should marry Mary Thorne; and as a falling drop will hollow a stone, so did the continual harping of his wife on the subject give rise to some amount of suspicion in his own mind. Then as to Beatrice, though she had made no promise that she would not again visit Mary, she was by no means prepared to set her mother's authority ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... know anything, and, if so, what did they know? Blondel hesitated. This persistence, this continual harping on one point, began to alarm him. But he carried it bravely. "Do you mean as to his convictions?" ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... week there were parties where they were sung. The singularity was their being always the same, and that the honest Tarasconers had never had an inclination to change them during the long, long time they had been harping on them. They were handed down from father to son in the families, without anybody improving on them or bowdlerising them: they were sacred. Never did it occur to Costecalde's mind to sing the Bezuquets', or ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... a voice out of heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of loud thunder; the voice which I heard was as that of harpers, harping with their harps. (3)And they sing as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four animals and the elders; and no one was able to learn the song, except the hundred and forty-four thousand, who are redeemed from the earth. (4)These are they who were not defiled with women; for ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... a great deal of harping on that tiresome old string, "Whatsoever your hand findeth to do, do it with all your might." It was daily dinned into my cars that the little things of life were the noblest, and that all the great people ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... been sitting in my chair, and broken the bottom out?'" said he, still harping on those blessed bears. I gave him up after that, and let ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... enchanted art than they had known before. And so it came to pass that as in every fairy dwelling there was this divine art, so in every palace and chieftain's hall, and in every farm, there were harpers harping on their harps, and all the land was full of sweet sounds and airs—shaping in music, imaginative war, and sorrows, and joys, and aspiration. Nor has their music failed. Still in the west and south of Ireland, the peasant, returning home, hears, as the ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... knew that flight meant the worst of all—a half-confession! But she had escaped! Thank God for that! Again and again in his hopeless perplexity this comfort returned to him,—he had saved her; he had done his duty. And harping upon this in his strange fatalism, it at last seemed to him that this was for what he had lived—for what he had suffered—for what he had fitly ended his career. Perhaps it was left for him now to pass his remaining years in forgotten exile—even as his father had—his father!—his breath came ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... harps of God," they stand, the hundred and forty and four thousand that were redeemed from among men; and there is heard, as the sound of many waters, and as the sound of a great thunder, "the voice of harpers harping with their harps."(1122) And they sing "a new song" before the throne, a song which no man can learn save the hundred and forty and four thousand. It is the song of Moses and the Lamb,—a song of deliverance. None but the hundred and forty-four thousand can learn that song; for ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... fragment of one of the speeches of Job's friends, in which the speaker has been harping on the old theme that affliction is the consequence and evidence of sin. He has much ado to square his theory with facts, and especially with the fact which brought him to Job's dunghill. But he gets over the difficulty by the simple method of assuming that, since his theory must ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and all the rest of it. Good clean drowning is good enough for me." It is hard to imagine any more depressing talk for a poor landsman on a dirty night; it is hard to imagine anything less sailor-like (as sailors are supposed to be, and generally are) than this persistent harping on the minor. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... land of glory and light The ransomed are singing in garments of white, The harpers are harping and all the bright train Sing the song of redemption, the ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... soup, nursing one another, looking at one another and pretending, in harping on principles, as we ourselves fade? If one half falls ill and retrogresses, shall the other who is strong, who hears the call of life, allow himself to be held back ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... rich and warm; but most of the oaks had reached the last stage of autumnal decay,—the dusky brown hue. Millions of their leaves strew the woods, and rustle underneath the foot; but enough remain upon the boughs to make a melancholy harping when the wind sweeps over them. We found some fringed gentians in the meadow, most of them blighted and withered; but a few were quite perfect. The other day, since our return from Salem, I found a violet; yet it was so cold that day, that a large pool of water, under the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... answered: "I believe you, gallant guests; with your long limbs and broad shoulders, we could never match you here. For we care nothing here for boxing, or for shooting with the bow; but for feasts, and songs, and harping, and dancing, and running races, to ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... 'Still harping of her father,' thought the Doctor to himself, and growing uneasy; yet, from his very anxiety to turn the subject, quite incapable of saying ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... sea—in their seeming simple paper covers, but with, oh, such complicated and subtle insides!—absent from the court which Nicolete held here in the greenwood. Never was such a nest of singing-birds. All day long, to the ear of the spirit, there was in this little library a sound of harping and singing and the telling of tales,—songs and tales of a world that never was, yet shall ever be. Here day by day Nicolete fed her young soul on the nightingale's-tongues of literature, and put down her ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... harping on her?" said Wilson. "Well, she doesn't hate him, I suppose, or she would ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... the song, that new song that is said to be sung by the hundred forty and four thousand which stand with the Lamb upon Mount Sion, with his Father's name written in their foreheads. These are also called harpers, harping with their harps: 'And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... beneath the windows with a guitar. It seems he had heard that flame of his sing a Spanish air at Jedburgh. Tom must needs pick it up, and you have no idea how he pestered me. Go where we would, he kept harping on that abominable ditty, in the hopes that his mistress might hear him; and, when I remonstrated on the absurdity of the proceeding, he quoted the case of Blondel, and some trash out of Uhland's ballads. Serenading on the west coast is by no means a pleasant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... Dorothy, that you would cease your harping on the same old subject!" he cried, worriedly. "You ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... Sally responded for him. "Nothing else could have such a fatal facility for harping on ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... in the morning, or hastening home (probably to cook their own dinner) at night, they read those clever, carefully worded articles and speeches by the men of power and weight, harping upon the charm and beauty and superiority of the Home Woman; and they laugh across to each other with a frank, rather pitying, rather irritated laughter, at the extraordinary dull-wittedness of ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... looked forward to it might be read in the invariable eagerness of his welcome; and this was even harder to explain, because the Elder never failed to harp—seldom, indeed, relaxed harping—on old misdeeds and the lost insurance money. Nay, perhaps in scorn of his own weakness, he insisted on this more and more offensively; rehearsing each day, as he climbed the hill, speeches calculated to offend or hurt. But in the intervals ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... have been better to fight ten battles than to give up one of them, still a set of flatterers harassed our pusillanimous emperor with harping on the dreaded name of Procopius, and affirmed that unless we quickly recrossed the river, that chieftain, as soon as he heard of the death of Julian, would easily bring about a revolution which no one could resist, by means of the fresh troops which ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... at the North are constantly harping on the subject of slavery, and yet lo! when some one emancipates a slave in the South, and he straggles off to the North, every one with whom he meets gives him a kick. Benevolent souls, look at the treatment ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... and Will exchange that sudden glance and nod, showing that the little secret they shared in common must have some connection with the subject Bluff was even then harping upon. ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... wandered far from the trenches of Soissons. It had come on to rain heavily, and we were forced to take refuge in the dugout of the sniper. Eight of us sat in the deep gloom huddled closely together. The Commandant was still harping upon that ill-placed machine gun. He could not get over it. My imperfect ear for French could not follow all his complaints, but some defence of the offender brought forth a 'Jamais! Jamais! Jamais!' which was rapped out as if it ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... gave the lads in charge to him, saying, "Steward, take these foundlings of mine, and train them well in the duties of pages, and later of squires. Take especial care with the training of Childe Horn, their chief; let him learn all thy knowledge of woodcraft and fishing, of hunting and hawking, of harping and singing; teach him how to carve before me, and to serve the cup solemnly at banquets; make him thy favourite pupil and train him to be a knight as good as thyself. His companions thou mayst put into other service, ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... piece of wood or iron, seized across the upper part of the shrouds at equal distances, to which the cat-harping legs are secured. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Tennyson, we find the proportion of University men increases. "Poeta nascitur et fit;" and if the demands of technical routine have sometimes tended to stifle, the comparative repose of a seclusion "unravaged" by the fierce activities around it, the habit of dwelling on the old wisdom and harping on the ancient strings, is calculated to foster the poetic temper and enrich its resources. The discouraging effect of a sometimes supercilious and conservative criticism is not an unmixed evil. The verse-writer who can be ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... increased, and, after ten days of fearful struggle between life and death mortification had ensued, and hope could exist no longer At first, Perez added, he seemed to shrink from the idea of priestly aid, only harping on one theme—to get strength enough to reach Segovia, and speak to the King. They had thought him mad, but humored him; but now he was almost furious in his wild cries for a priest, not only to shrive him, but to ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... Lincoln were forwarded by him and many were printed in the annual publication of diplomatic correspondence, those that thus appeared dealt almost exclusively with emancipation. Yet Adams was also forwarding addresses and speeches harping on American democracy. A meeting at Edinburgh, February 19, found place, in its emancipation aspect in the United States documents[1365], but the burden of that meeting, democracy, did not. It was there proclaimed ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... spectre—bringest thou life or death? Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier? Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet? Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now, Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack'd voice harping, screeching? ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... respectable part of the nation. They are, as they pretend, the virtuous part of the people, because they are quiet; as if virtue consisted in immobility! There is a canting Scotchman in London, who publishes a paper called the 'Champion' who is everlastingly harping upon the virtues of the 'fireside,' and who inculcates the duty of quiet submission. Might we ask this Champion of the teapot and milk-jug whether Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights were won by the fireside? Whether the tyrants ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... did not walk his body off, but harping on the same string, pertinaciously continued to ply me with alternate arguments and intreaties, until at last fairly wearied out, and more, I believe, with the hope of getting rid of the "importunate chink" of the fellow's discourse, than anything else, in an evil moment I consented! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... mentioned these circumstances, worthy reader, to show you the whimsical crowd of associations that are apt to beset my mind on mingling among English scenes. I hope they may, in some measure, plead my apology, should I be found harping upon stale and trivial themes, or indulging an over-fondness for any thing antique and obsolete. I know it is the humour, not to say cant of the day, to run riot about old times, old books, old customs, and old buildings; with myself, however, as far as I have caught the contagion, the feeling ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... evils. It ought to do this; does it? On some of us I fear it produces no effect at all. Some of you, dear friends, look at that light with lack-lustre eyes, or, rather, with blind eyes, that are dark as midnight in the blaze of noonday. The voice comes from the Cross, sweet as that of harpers harping with their harps, and mighty as the voice of many waters, and you hear nothing. Some of us it slightly moves now and then, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... the old man said. Still harping on the hay—the hay which doesn't amount to anything and cannot be of any real help. It's sheer nonsense to think that the hay in that stack is enough to feed the flocks of a whole district. There ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... him. When there followed long succession of eminent men discussing Budget, Mr. G. felt that if he remained any longer he must yield to temptation. Accordingly, withdrew from scene. Returned again an hour later; still harping on the Budget; the SQUIRE had spoken twice, and there seemed nothing to be done but to work off whatever remaining speeches had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... Langland, in "Piers Plowman," dwelt on the social wrongs of the time; Ball was fond of quoting from Langland, and of harping on a familiar couplet: ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... was he not like a cloisterer, With threadbare cope as is a poor scholer; But he was like a master or a pope. Of double worsted was his semicope*, *short cloak That rounded was as a bell out of press. Somewhat he lisped for his wantonness, To make his English sweet upon his tongue; And in his harping, when that he had sung, His eyen* twinkled in his head aright, *eyes As do the starres in a frosty night. This worthy limitour ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... brothers, hath already displayed himself so remarkably as to be both hated and despised; and a combination amongst the booksellers will soon be against him and his brother the lawyer. They are men of the keenest avarice, and their very looks (according to what I am told) dart out harping irons. I have ordered Mr. Noel to drop every article in my Lord's Commission when they shall be hoisted up to too ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... hope," asked Handyside, "that there is any chance of recovering the box or, rather, its contents? Forgive my harping ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell |
